


Speed and Recklessness

by Engineer104



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Police, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Eren is like Barry but also not, Gen, M/M, Pseudoscience, Superspeed, it's basically a Flash AU, some violence but it's not really graphic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-05
Updated: 2014-09-09
Packaged: 2018-02-16 07:03:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2260404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Engineer104/pseuds/Engineer104
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s called many things:  the Scarlet Speedster, the Fastest Man Alive, the Flash. . .<br/>. . .Eren Jaeger.</p>
<p>Or, more specifically:  twelve years ago, Carla Jaeger was brutally murdered, her husband accused but missing.  Now, their son Eren works tirelessly to locate his father, clear his name, and find the true killer, while superheroing and solving some other crimes in the process.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Flashback

**Author's Note:**

> I do not own these characters (obviously).
> 
> I would like to apologize ahead of time for the scientific inaccuracies; I know next to nothing on forensic science and have a bare understanding about how the court system works. That being said, if you want to continue:
> 
> _Feel free to suspend your disbelief._ I mean, superhero AUs...

_Never start what you can’t finish._

Eren jerked his head up, blinking sleep from his eyes when he realized he was sitting in a courtroom.  The defense attorney was droning on about her client’s (dubious) alibi even as advice gifted to him by his mother long ago reverberated in his head.

“I offered you coffee an hour ago,” Mikasa muttered from beside him.

“And I still don’t like coffee,” Eren retorted, rubbing his face with one hand while the other clutched the manila envelope still perched on his lap.

“You don’t have to like it.”

He ignored her and ground his teeth together, tempted to slap himself even as he started to nod off again; when he felt a sharp elbow in his ribs, he shot a glare at the beat cop beside him.  She offered him a slight, sympathetic smile that still somehow managed to appear condescending.

Mikasa would definitely be scolding him for pulling another all-nighter, and then proceed to give him unsolicited advice.

_Just let it rest._

“The prosecution would like to call Eren Jaeger to the stand.”

Eren flinched and stood up, schooling his face into something calm, something that would endear the jury to his words and the evidence he clutched in his hands.  He walked, at a perfectly measured pace, to the front of the courtroom until he reached the witness stand; he took the seat beside the judge and looked at the prosecutor; he recognized them as Hange Zoe, a lawyer the police department often worked with.  The thick-lensed glasses perched on their nose, coupled with a perpetual grin, afforded them a rather manic appearance, but to even a law-novice like Eren, there was no doubting their ability.

Hange questioned him relentlessly, and he showed all the information that needed to be shown, all the biological and situational evidence for the trial.  Eren glanced at the defendant, a hulking blonde probably just a few years older than him, and was almost overcome by the usual revulsion towards murderers.

_Why would you take another’s life?_

* * *

With the trial ended and the defendant charged with second-degree murder (he was still a little hazy on what each “degree” signified), Eren and Mikasa departed the courthouse and halted at the top of the steps leading to the building, blinking in the afternoon sun, but a familiar voice soon captured his attention.

“So, Eren, clue me in?”

He and Mikasa both turned to where a tall, slender figure leaned against a stone column, slight smirk on his face and tape recorder clutched in his hand.

Eren sighed and grumbled, “Fuck off, Jean.  There’s a reason the press weren’t invited.”

“Yeah, but I remember you being a hell of a lot more helpful last time that happened. . .”

“And I almost lost my job thanks to your tilted story,” Eren retorted irritably, clenching his fists at his sides as Jean sauntered closer.

“What about you, Mikasa?” the journalist inquired, raising an eyebrow.  “Do _you_ have anything to say about the _very high profile_ Maria case?”

“Not to you,” she told him curtly, patting the gun on her hip with something like relish.

Jean followed the motion with his eyes and visibly blanched, and Eren couldn’t help but grin, even though they both (probably) knew Mikasa would never shoot him.  “She still hasn’t forgiven you for last time either,” he commented mirthfully.

“I can see that,” Jean muttered.  He tapped the recorder against his thigh, face contemplative as if he was brainstorming interrogation tactics.  “So, Eren, we never went on that date. . .”

Eren stifled the urge to punch him, but still achieved some satisfaction from exhibiting his middle finger.

* * *

“ _Another_ all-nighter?” Armin asked disbelievingly.

“Yeah,” Eren said, somewhat distracted while he leafed through a file of particular interest.  It was infuriatingly sparse, with just a single witness testimony and barely any biological evidence.

_If we had the technology then that we have today. . ._

Armin sighed loudly, rudely tugging Eren from the depths of his mind.  “Well, if you insist, do you want me to bring you anything?” he wondered, voice retreating along with his footsteps.

“No thanks,” Eren replied while he stared at a photo of the crime scene.  So focused was he that he didn’t hear the door to the lab shutting or notice the rain outside turning into hail.

With the constant rumble of thunder serving as background music, Eren set about attempting to recreate the scenario with the photo, splattering red paint onto a tray to serve as blood.  He didn’t even _need_ the picture though, since it was perfectly preserved in his memory. . .

_Eren waved goodbye to Armin as he walked backwards up the path to his house.  Once his friend returned the gesture, along with a shout of “see you tomorrow!”, he spun around, skipping the last few paces to the door, eager to show his mother the ribbon he won at the multiplication bee, eager to see her smile after upsetting her the previous night._

_He pressed the doorbell and waited._

_When it had been waiting too long, at least by his young and restless estimation, he prodded the button again, and just to be sure, he perched on his toes and slammed the doorknocker a few times._

_After it became apparent that neither his mother nor his father were about to answer, he went back down the path, down the sidewalk, and to the neighbor’s house._

_When he rang that doorbell, Hannes answered immediately:_

_“Oh, Eren!” he said, smiling.  “Did you forget which house was yours again?”_

_Eren rolled his eyes (that had been_ one time _!  Not to mention they’d still been new in the neighborhood, and all the houses looked the same, which was beside the point. . .) and ignored his teasing, instead wondering, “Do you know where my parents are?  They’re not answering the door.”_

_Hannes frowned.  “Hold on, I’ll get the spare key,” he said, retreating back into his house._

_Eren watched him until he vanished around a corner, shifting from foot to foot while he waited and shrugging his shoulders to relieve some of the weight from his backpack.  When Hannes reappeared, key in hand, he stepped out to join Eren, shutting his door behind him._

_“All right, let’s go see if anyone’s home,” he announced cheerfully, but there was something false underlying his tone._

_Eren followed Hannes across the connecting lawn, jogging to keep up with his longer stride._

_Key slipped into lock with ease, and Hannes slowly nudged the door open, calling out, “Carla?  Grisha?”_

_He was still blocking Eren’s view when he gasped, reversing and slamming the door shut.  “Holy_ shit _!” he swore, barely taking notice of his charge as he sprinted back to his own house._

_Eren, confused at his fright, chose to ignore Hannes’ strange behavior and returned his attention to the door.  He pulled the key out and tucked it into his pocket, just in case, and turned the knob.  He pushed the door and followed it inside, stopping in his tracks when he spotted the scene in the living room._

_His mother, lying motionless on the blood-stained carpet, her dark brown hair, just like his, covering her face, and his father, squatting just a few feet away and covered in blood, his face in his dirty hands and sobs shaking his body._

_“Mom?” Eren said loudly, fearlessly.  “Dad?”_

_He stilled and looked up immediately.  “Eren?” he said quietly, questioningly.  His glasses were fogged up, and he stood, towering over his son, who had never before appreciated how tall Grisha was._

_Eren now saw the knife gripped in his father’s hand, a knife that he had seen his mother use to slice meat in the kitchen._

_It didn’t occur to him to be afraid; he simply stared at his father’s tear-plastered face, even as he dropped the knife and turned around.  His shoes left imprints in the soft carpet, and Eren watched him leave._

_“Eren?” a new voice piqued up behind him just moments after his father disappeared._

_He spun around to see Hannes standing in the open doorway, a gun in his hand while he peered back into the room.  “I called the police, okay?”  Then, he blinked, as if realizing something was missing.  “Hey, Eren, where’s your father. . .”_

A flare of lightning burst through the scene playing out in Eren’s head, imprinting on his retinas even as he tried to blink the spots away.  He yawned and scowled, flinching almost gratefully after a particularly loud clap of thunder.

Not for the first time, he lamented the lack of physical evidence, wished that something more than the fingerprints on the knife had been preserved. . .

Wished that those sole fingerprints were not his father’s.

Wished that he could track down his father and ask him about everything himself.

“Ah, fuck,” he mumbled, placing his face in his palms.

Eren’s stomach growled with hunger, and that was when he realized that he really _really_ needed to pee.

He stood up straight and plodded out of the lab, feet heavy with the exhaustion of pulling two consecutive all-nighters.  Once he was in the bathroom, he ignored his most immediate need and turned on the tap.

After washing his face, he felt much more alert (but there was no telling how long that would last) and relieved himself.  As he lathered his hands with soap, the lights overhead flickered and finally blew out.

Eren sighed and closed the tap.  He contemplated the drier for a moment, for once not particularly appreciative of the department’s new environmental consciousness.  When a flicker of lightning momentarily lit the restroom, he simply wiped his palms on the seat of his pants and walked back to the door.

Force of habit alerted him to switch off the lights.

_What lights?_ his brain reminded him.

But his hand was too slow to react, and when his fingertip brushed the light switch, an electric shock jumped through his skin.

Eren chuckled to himself, reaching up and touching his hair, laughing even more when he felt how it stood on end.  He attempted to smooth it back down, but when it proved too stubborn, he went back to the sink, soaked his hands, and ran them over his head.

A drop of water trickled down his face and onto his lip.  He licked it on impulse.

_Is that. . . salt?_

He shrugged and, deciding that his hair definitely needed a comb through it and this was the closest he’d had to a shower in forty-eight hours, he cupped his hands together under the running water.

Sufficiently pleased with his pathetic attempt at hygiene, he returned to the lab, muttering curses when he stubbed his toe in the doorway thanks to his limited visibility.  He tucked away the case on his mother’s murder and decided that he might as well get started on something much newer.

As Eren reached for a bottle on the highest shelf, the window in front of him shattered with the force of thunder directly overhead.  Rain and hail plummeted into the lab, and he shielded his face after a small chunk of ice struck his nose.  He barely had time to retreat before he was blinded by a lightning strike.

His life in this moment stretched out into an hour.

The tendril of electrons and energy reached through the window, as if a hand begging for help, and he stretched out to assist, to welcome the warmth.

Only it was far more than _warm._

Fire flared through his body, boiling his blood and incinerating his organs, and oh God why hasn’t he been vaporized and charred to dust yet.

But how _exhilarating_ , he realized as one billion volts and ten thousand amps of electricity surged through his nerves, igniting his muscles, making him feel like he could run a marathon in under a minute – no, a second.

And just like that, the sensations were gone, leaving Eren numb and aching.  The light in his vision dimmed and he once more felt hailstones against his skin, but their impact was muted.  He fell to his knees, barely registering the broken glass digging into his pants and pricking his legs, and trembling, he collapsed.

The last thing Eren saw before he passed out was the power flickering back on.

* * *

The first thing Eren registered was the steady beat of a monitor, only it seemed achingly sluggish to his ears.  As he twitched his eyelids open, he wondered if he was under anesthesia, until he remembered.

“Wha dayzit,” he mumbled.

“Could you repeat that?” a concerned voice asked from nearby.

Eren narrowed his eyes until they focused, and he spotted Mikasa sitting just beside him, her hands smoothing his blankets.

“It’s the third of August,” someone else replied.  “Yesterday, Reiner Braun was convicted for the murder of Maria Wall.”

He turned his head to see Armin on his other side, a smile on his face.

“All things considered,” the blonde prattled on, “you woke up much sooner than the doctor expected.  She thought you’d be under for another week _at least_.  Not to mention, the lacerations in your leg, thanks to the glass, are already healed.”

“I’m a fighter,” Eren retorted, pleased to hear that his voice sounded much less garbled as he regained consciousness.

“I guess in the end, the only way you’d get any sleep was if you were struck by lightning,” Armin added wryly.

“Or went to court,” Mikasa offered softly, reaching over to push Eren’s bangs from his eyes.

He quickly smacked her hand away.  “That other lawyer had an awful voice,” he complained.  “Even if Braun had a watertight case for him, he would’ve still been found guilty ‘cause she would’ve put the jury to sleep with her monotone.”

“Whatever,” Mikasa said, “but make sure you sleep more, okay?  This wouldn’t have happened if you’d gone home and _slept_.”

“Yes, _Mom,_ ” he grumbled, rolling his eyes at her.

“Anyway, someone already sent you flowers,” Armin said, interrupting the tense silence with a nod at a bedside table that Eren hadn’t noticed.

“Who?” Eren wondered, reaching for the card tucked into the wrapping paper.  “They’re probably from Sasha and Connie; no one else is clueless enough to send fucking _roses_.”  He tore the envelope open, ignoring Armin’s and Mikasa’s curious gazes, and pulled out the card.  When he unfolded the thick paper, a pair of lottery tickets fell into his lap.

He had an awful suspicion about the identity of the sender even before he read the handwritten note.

_Watch out for sharks and falling coconuts!  But if you win, split the winnings with me; you owe me for keeping quiet on the Maria case. – J.K._

Eren bowed his head over the note and lamented, “I’m being courted by a pushy journalist with a bad sense of humor.”


	2. New

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is Levi, confusion, flirting, theft, and more confusion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn't gonna post it just yet, but then I thought, "Fuck it."

Levi Ackerman was not a man to be trifled with, even if you towered over him, even if he walked with a pronounced limp, even if one of his goals in life was to spread his neurosis to the rest of Trost’s human population.

Levi Ackerman had a certain gravitas about him, one that he communicated effortlessly through an expression that was both angry and disinterested at the same time, the way he somehow managed to look down his nose at Eren, who was quite a bit taller than him.

Levi Ackerman didn’t so much as comment on his underling being struck by lightning, sliced up by glass, and walking and talking once more within the short span of three days when he passed along a stack of case folders.

“The top one is urgent,” he deadpanned while clutching and swirling a mug of steaming tea.  “Write a report on your findings and pass it along to Detective Leonhart by tomo—“

Eren felt rather than saw the multitude of papers flutter out of his hands and towards the floor; they fell slowly, slowly enough that he managed to catch every single sheet and stuff it back into its designated folder before his boss noticed.

“—rrow morning,” Levi was still saying.  He raised his mug to his lips and drank deeply, a rare contentedness on his face when he set it back down on his desk; Eren imagined the steam from the hot drink trickling from his nostrils and ears.

“The blood sample from the coroner should already be in the lab, ready for analysis,” Levi added.

“Uh, right,” Eren said, clutching the files to his chest and turning towards the lab, eager to get back to work.

In truth, the last two days since waking up had been utterly dull.  After checking out from the boredom of the hospital, he had the boredom of his apartment to contend with.  Sure, Sasha and Connie popped in from next door to make sure he really _was_ intact and plastered him with a lovely gift of vodka and more questions than he wanted to answer (“Why were you there so late anyway?”  “What did it _feel_ like?”  “Oooh, who sent you these flowers?”).

But he couldn’t evade listlessness, so he cleaned the apartment from top to bottom, thoroughly enough that should Levi see it, he would raise his eyebrows and mutter, “Not bad.”

Somehow, the flurry of activity had only burned through an hour and culminated in Mikasa paying him a visit and scolding him for not resting, although he’d passed out, exhausted, after she left.

It was his restlessness and the peculiar tedium of _home_ that encouraged him to return to work before the end of the week’s rest that Dr. Brzenska suggested.

After Eren set about analyzing the blood sample for Annie’s case in a lab with a brand new window, he flipped through the file for more details.  The usual death by gang in Shiganshina, along with the usual potentially drug-addled state of the victim; the exact drug could actually help identify _which_ gang.

He tapped his fingertips against the desk, examining a photo of the crime scene.  He narrowed his eyes at it when he recognized the Rite-Aid in the background; this was just a few blocks from where he used to live. . .

Eren’s hand flew to the pocket of his lab coat when he heard the audible buzz of his mobile.  He glanced around, wary of Levi’s random visits to the lab, then tugged it out when all he saw was another technician glaring into the objectives of a microscope.

Four text messages glowed on his screen; the first was from Hannes and an hour old:  _Good news lets celebrate tonite._

He smiled at the text, happy that his old neighbor could have something to celebrate despite his age, and replied in agreement before turning his attention to the last three texts.

All were infuriatingly grammatically correct messages from an infuriatingly obnoxious journalist: 

_Feel better yet? If yes_  
Tell me something good  
About the Maria case.

Eren, rolling his eyes yet unable to resist grinning at the borderline flirting-slash-almost poetry, quickly typed out a reply:  _yes how did u kno and no_

He returned his phone to his pocket and his attention to the file still lying open on the lab bench, ignoring the vibration against his thigh that signified Jean’s response in favor of examining the photo of the Shiganshina murder case a little more closely.

He glanced through the victim’s details and frowned when he read that their identity was unknown, then zeroed in on a particular _thing_ in the picture, a _thing_ painted onto the wall of the Rite-Aid.

It was vaguely familiar, and for some reason, Eren’s blood ran cold.

A gaping maw curved into an ugly grin and decorated with sharp, unevenly spaced teeth, one of which glistened with a drop of red; there was no doubt in Eren’s head that it was a gang symbol, graffiti marking territory, but this one seemed. . .different.  It didn’t look ‘cool’ or ‘trashy’ or whatever other adjectives could be associated with the signs used by the Shiganshina gangs.

This. . .  this one was actually _scary_.

* * *

Eren set the photo back in the file and flipped the folder closed, breathing hard.  He forced his tense shoulders to relax, surprised and ashamed that just a simple _picture of graffiti_ could make him this anxious, and glanced at the machine running his analysis.  He sighed in relief when he noticed it was done, the computer screen beside it filling with the resultant spectrum.

He removed the test tube of blood (an involuntary chill ran down his spine along with the unwelcome image of the maw popping into his mind) and crossed to the other side of the lab, to the refrigerator.

He stumbled, ankle twisting as his knees buckled, and the test tube flew out of his hand.

“Shit!” he gasped, straightening and reaching out reflexively, even though he knew he couldn’t catch it and that it would shatter and cause a colossal, hazardous mess for him to clean.

Except as he jumped forward a few paces and held out his hand, the tube landed neatly in his palm.

_Weird._  Eren curled his fingers around the test tube, aware of the sound of his heartbeat in his ears, and held tightly as he finally made it to the sample storage fridge.  He refused to loosen his grip until he slid it into a proper test tube holder, and felt weirdly regretful that no one had been in the lab to witness his amazing and undoubtedly unrepeatable feat of speed.

* * *

 

After printing the spectrum from the blood analysis, Eren’s stomach growled hungrily.  He frowned up at the clock, which only read ten, too early to take a proper lunch break, and definitely too early to be this ravenous, especially considering the size of his breakfast _just three hours ago._

He grabbed the spectrum and the file it belonged with and left the lab, deciding that he might as well eat his lunch while working.  As he walked down the short hall to his desk, he pushed his safety glasses up to rest on his head and pulled his phone from his pocket to glance at Jean’s brief reply:

_Armin told me._

Ignoring the annoying pang of disappointment at the message’s lack of insightfulness, Eren detoured to Armin’s nearby desk.

He was typing something away on a laptop, leaning towards it slightly, with the glow of the screen illuminating his face eerily.

Eren slid his phone across the desk so that it rested beside Armin’s elbow, waiting till he glanced up, blinking as if he had never quite seen anything like him before, and then following his gaze to the electronic device new to his space.

“What?” he said with a hint of irritation, probably at the interruption.

“Why did you tell him?” Eren demanded.

Armin skimmed over the text conversation before looking back up at his friend.  He shrugged.  “In my experience, people who send flowers care about the recipient’s well-being,” he replied matter-of-factly.  “So I told him you checked out of the hospital.”

“Did you mention that I did _not_ , in fact, win the lottery?”

Armin flashed him a grin.  “No, I did not, but if he’s still asking you about the Maria case, then he must think you’re at least rich with information.”

Eren sighed.  “Maybe I should throw him a bone.”

“No, Eren, you really shouldn’t.”

“But there’s supposed to be a press conference about it tomorrow,” Eren pointed out.  “What could it hurt?”

“Then tell Jean to be there,” Armin told him with a shrug.  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a few things to decrypt, and you have a new text message.”

Sure enough, Eren’s phone lit up and vibrated as the words left his mouth.  “Well, I never pegged you for a fortune-teller, Armin,” Eren commented wryly while he reached for his phone.  When he read the text, he chuckled, shaking his head and reaffirming, “You’re _definitely_ some kind of fortune-teller.”

“Why, what does it say?” Armin inquired warily.

Eren showed him:  _I meant to ask, are we rich?_

* * *

Two turkey sandwiches later, Eren was still ravenous, not to mention sleepy.

He kept his chin perched on his palm while he clicked through emails, deleting spam and biting his hand to stifle a guffaw at the bad joke that Connie sent him.  His head dipped forward, eyes slipping closed, until something slammed onto his desk, jerking him awake.

“Huh?” he said, floundering slightly at the appearance of Mikasa, dressed in her beat cop blues and hair tied back in a messy ponytail.

“Coffee?” she said, waving a black mug with a red ‘I <3 COPS’ logo.

“Is your goal in life to make sure I start drinking coffee?”

“No, my goal in life is to make sure that you stop falling asleep when you need to be awake, and start falling asleep at _night_.”

Eren rolled his eyes.  “I’ll have you know I slept twelve hours last night,” he retorted, voice slightly muffled when he rubbed his face.

“That’s good,” Mikasa commented, a hint of relief in her voice, “but why are you still tired?”

“I ate turkey for lunch.”

Mikasa raised an eyebrow at him.  “It’s not even eleven, and why would _turkey_ matter?”

“Turkey contains tryptophan, tryptophan makes you drowsy.”

From nearby, another beat cop coughed, “Nerd.”

They ignored him, and Mikasa suggested, “So stop eating turkey.”

“But it’s tasty and reminds me of my mom.  She used to make me turkey sandwiches for lunch every day for school.”  Eren was completely unashamed of the childish and food-bent shape his nostalgia often took.

Mikasa looked at him with a sympathetic tilt to her lips, but that was quickly replaced by disbelief when he added, “Plus, she was born in Turkey.”

“You sound like a drunk when you’re tired,” she complained, setting her mug on his desk and strutting away before Eren could push it back into her hands.

“Maybe something else with caffeine would help?” Eren muttered to himself, flicking the mug’s handle and noticing that it was, in fact, empty.  Then, he shrugged and returned his attention to his computer screen.

When his eyes landed on a particular email, all his exhaustion vanished.  _This again._

He nudged the computer mouse so that the cursor fell over it and clicked it open:

_i’m so sorry please forgive me_

Eren ran his fingers through his hair, the short message stirring up confusion and exasperation and sympathy.  There was no subject and the sender had a simple, generic email address (drmercury@gmail.com), but the worst part was that this was the fifth received in two weeks.

They weren’t all the same message, but they were all along the same vein, begging forgiveness for an unknown offense, whether through pleas or through quotes by the famous.

Eren had deleted the first one, but when he received the second, he started to keep them, as if he planned on one day making a case against an apparent stalker.

“So when’s your lunch break?”

Once more, Eren was rudely pulled from his thoughts and into the office.  He glanced up from his computer to see Jean standing over him.

Eren refused to inquire how he’d managed to sneak into the police station and simply rolled his eyes and said, “Jean, just go to the press conference tomorrow; I’m sure you already know all about it.”

Jean planted his hands on Eren’s desk and leaned towards him, close enough that he could feel a warm puff of breath against his face.  “That’s not why I’m asking you,” he retorted, voice low.

Eren ignored the pleasant chills inching their way up his spine and pushed his chair backwards, away from the journalist and his blatant flirting.  “You pretty much ruined any chance of a date when you quoted me in that article,” he said in what he hoped was an imposing tone.  He crossed his arms and glared up at Jean pointedly.

Jean straightened and crossed his own arms, appraising Eren with a slight scowl on his long face.  “I never said anything about a date, Eren.  I just wanted to catch up.”

“Well, I’m still not interested, because knowing you, you’d still end up pegging me for details on the Maria case.”

“That text was mostly a joke, and besides, you think too little of me.”

“I have a good reason.”

They stared at each other for a few tense minutes, a muscle in Jean’s jaw visibly twitching.  “Fine,” he finally said, nodding as he dropped his arms and spun around, his clenched fist swinging into a file-laden tray on Eren’s desk and knocking papers and cardstock into a haphazard pile on the floor.

“Shit,” they grumbled simultaneously.

Jean bent down to start picking up loose papers and stuffing them randomly into folders while Eren quickly stood and darted around his desk to join him.  He shoved Jean’s hands away and said, “Leave it to me; you might see something you shouldn’t.”

“I could use a bit more faith from a friend, you know,” Jean commented snidely while he handed over a file.

Eren organized the pages inside with a skill and swiftness that surprised even him, barely flinching when Jean continued to pass evidence, spectra, and photographs to him, if a little slowly for his liking, but Eren grudgingly appreciated the help.

When they finished, Eren slid the pile of folders onto his desk, standing up rapidly and, in a fit of goodwill, offering Jean a hand.  He accepted without hesitation, and Eren tugged him to his feet, a little envious of the gracefulness he still managed.

“So did you change your mind after our alliance?” Jean wondered mildly, his lips quirking into a smirk.

Eren averted his eyes, absentmindedly tracing the edge of the desk with his fingertip.  “It’ll take more than that to sway me, Han Solo,” he responded, unable to stifle a grin.

Jean huffed out a choked-sounding laugh.  “Nerd.”

“Yeah, says the guy who uses ‘alliance’ in regular conversation.”

“Jaeger, don’t you have work to do?” a pointed shout interrupted their banter.

Eren turned his head towards the voice and spotted Levi narrowing his eyes at him.  He raised his hand reassuringly, offering an apologetic wave, then returned his attention to Jean.  “Well, you’ve pretty much made sure I lost my lunch break, you know.”

Jean shrugged.  “Maybe another time then,” he said, a little regretfully Eren thought, before spinning on his heel and walking away between the crowd of desks and clutter.

Eren watched his retreating figure, contemplatively.  He considered giving Jean another chance next time he saw him, but his consideration vanished only to be replaced by denial when he noticed he was missing a manila folder.

Jean stole the Maria case file.

* * *

_Fucking bastard is never getting another chance._

It was raining again as Eren trudged from the police station to the bus stop, every distant rumble of thunder making him jump, phantom lightning flashing across his eyelids every time he blinked.  He pulled his jacket over his head, regretting not taking the ride that Armin offered him, and even more when he spotted the bus pulling away from the sidewalk.

“Oh, fuck!” he shouted, earning him a few offended glances from bystanders, and jogged in a futile attempt to catch up, picking up his speed as the bus inserted itself into traffic, until he sprinted forward, streetlights and car headlights blurring out of focus and the rain lightening.

The storm was silent, the traffic quiet, and he couldn’t see anything but horizontal streams of light as he ran.

He halted, bending over, clutching his head, blinking furiously, suddenly afraid that he’d lost his vision.  He panted heavily, as if he’d exerted more energy sprinting towards the bus than he’d realized; the soles of his feet burned against cool soil, a pleasant sensation, and he thought he could smell the acrid tang of smoke.

It wasn’t raining anymore, and Eren couldn’t hear any thunder.  He slowly opened his eyes and let out a strangled gasp.

Gone was Trost, gone were the cars, the crowded streets, the bus, the storm. . .  The sky was clear, of clouds and city smog alike, bright with stars and a gibbous moon.  The air was hot and humid against his face, and he shrugged of his jacket as he examined his surroundings.

Half-grown stalks of corn enveloped him on all sides, except for a narrow path of crushed crop that looked like it was forged by human feet. . .

“Oh, fuck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I think the chapters from here on out will be longer; I apologize for the inconsistency.
> 
> Anyway, I hope you liked this one. =]
> 
> (And for the record, I do not <3 cops... But I do <3 Mikasa.)


	3. Initial Velocity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eren acquaints himself with his new found abilities. Also the superheroing begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting when your eyes are drooping after a long day is never a good idea.

Eren stood in the middle of a cornfield in the middle of nowhere with only a vague suspicion on how he ended up so far out of Trost, yet the first thing he did was wad up his now-tattered, slightly smoldering jacket and repurpose it as a pillow.  He laid down on the swath of crushed corn, stalks, and soil, the sickly sweet smell of the crop permeating the air.

It was a serene atmosphere, one that helped drain the adrenaline and borderline panic from his system.  As he took deep, calming breaths, he stared up at the stars, marveling that there could be so many, outlining shapes that he could barely fathom.  In any case, the only one constellation he could actually make out was the Big Dipper.

Eren sighed through his nose, unsure exactly how to go about returning to Trost, but then he put that thought on hold when he remembered Hannes.

He slipped his phone from his jeans pocket and, ignoring the various reminders from Mikasa and Armin, he dialed Hannes’ number, thinking, _Please let there be service, please let there be service, please let there be service. . ._

The call connected, and Eren supposed that the dial tone was the most beautiful sound ever to grace his ears.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Hannes,” Eren greeted, surprised at the deceptive calm in his own voice.

“Oh, Eren, don’t tell me you forgot,” Hannes said, tone accusatory.

Eren rubbed his face with his free hand, pinching the bridge of his nose and replying, “Yeah, I’m so sorry, I got caught up at work.  Tomorrow?”

“Nah, I’ll just tell you the news,” he replied with a hint of excitement.  “I got promoted!  I’m a police captain now!”

“Holy shit, congratulations!” Eren supplied, his predicament momentarily forgotten.  He put a hand to his chest, feeling the outline of the key he wore around his neck through his shirt.

“Thanks,” Hannes said.  “I’m excited, even though I’d been planning to retire soon.”  He laughed wryly.  “Anyway, you take care of yourself, okay?  It’s storming, so don’t get struck by lightning again.”

Eren didn’t even want to imagine what would become of him if that happened.

* * *

After another moment of cheerful, misleading conversation, Eren bid his goodbyes to Hannes and shoved his phone back into his pocket, but not without grimacing at the dismal affair of the battery life.  He stood up, almost losing his balance when his head spun, and attempted to orient himself with his surroundings.

Eren had no fucking clue where he was, but he knew where he was _not_ , so it was a start.

He ventured down the crumpled path he formed on his mad dash here, thinking about calling Armin and begging him to pick him up once he adjusted to his bearings.

Mind wandering, he tugged the key out of his shirt and ran a finger over the serrated edge; originally, he’d simply forgotten to give it to the city officials that took over the house, but it became unimportant when it was clear that no one would ever live in his childhood home again.

Even Eren never went back, although a part of him wanted to, as if he suspected there might be something to find, something to glean new information on his mother’s murder and father’s disappearance.  But he knew there was nothing relevant, knew it had all been scrutinized twelve years previous, examined for all possible information and immediately tossed.

He dropped the key and let it bob against his chest as he walked, the rhythm lulling him into a sort of reverie.  He was tempted to run, to find out if the. . . _speeding incident_ could be replicated, but fear kept him grounded.

But then, it _probably_ wouldn’t hurt to try.

_If you don’t try, you can’t succeed._

Eren picked his feet up a little higher, moving his legs faster until he was jogging effortlessly.  He tucked his shredded jacket under his arm and increased his pace to a proper run.  The wind humming by his ears fell silent, the surrounding corn stalks transforming into green-yellow blurs smearing on his periphery.  He blinked, and when his eyelids flickered back open, he was astonished to see his surroundings coming slightly more into focus; as he continued shutting and closing his eyes, eventually everything appeared as it should.

Was he not still running?

No, he still plowed through the air, which felt as dense as water at this speed, fighting to slow him down while he fought harder still.

When he spotted asphalt and streetlights, he slowed his footsteps and shrunk his strides, stopping at the edge of the cornfield just a few yards away from the road.  He bent forward, breathing deeply but not quite panting, his heart drumming like a set of cymbals in his chest.

Eren grinned to himself in relief, and even the discoveries that he’d dropped his jacket along the way and that the hem of his shirt smoked couldn’t dampen his relief.

* * *

He didn’t bother with a greeting after Armin picked up.

“Armin, I need a favor.”

He paced along the edge of the road, back and forth between a sign that signified a U.S. highway and a mile marker, while he waited for his friend’s response.

“What is it?” Armin asked, tone wary; he knew only too well that Eren rarely bothered to beg assistance.

“I’m on Route 104, right by mile 57,” Eren admitted a little quietly.  “Can you come pick me up?”

“Eren,” Armin said cautiously, “that’s over a hundred miles out of Trost.  How the hell did you even get there?”

“Uh, it’s a long story, and I might need your help to figure out all of it.”

Armin sighed.  “All right, I’ll come and get you,” he relented, if a little exasperatedly.  “Just hang tight.”

Eren heard the shifting in sound on the other end of the line and was quick to add, “Also tell Levi that I won’t be in tomorrow.”

“Why don’t you tell him yourself?”

“My phone has only five percent of battery left, plus he scares the shit out of me.”

Armin chuckled.  “Yeah, okay,” he said, a rattling of keys apparent in his background.

“Thanks, Armin, you’re amazing,” Eren told him earnestly.

“I try.”

The signal cut out, Armin hanging up, and Eren’s phone died before his eyes.  “ _You_ are less amazing,” he mumbled to it.  He sighed and shoved it in his pocket and began pacing, waiting for Armin to appear.

He contemplated whatever. . .everything was, the feeling of the warm asphalt digging into his feet, the slight scent of smoke clinging to his clothes, the fact that he could make it from the mile marker to the highway sign, which were about a hundred yards apart, in the blink of an eye.

Hannes’ promotion, the key dangling from his neck, the weird apologetic emails, Jean stealing the Maria case file, the lightning. . .

_The lightning._

Eren shook his head, as if he could dislodge a ridiculous thought from his brain that way.  To think that being struck by lightning could’ve done this. . .

Well, _this_ was ludicrous enough for the lightning to be the ‘how’ to get superpowers, but _superpowers_?  No, there was no such thing, except. . .

Eren remembered an incident from a few years back, while he was still in college, something that both he and Jean were particularly interested in, Eren from a scientific standpoint and Jean from the journalistic perspective.

(Jean had called it sensationalism at first, thinking that maybe Eren found the article in _The Onion_ by accident, until Armin reassured them it was definitely real.)

A cooling chamber at the Shiganshina power plant exploded, but no one that actually worked at the plant was injured.  Only a bystander was caught in the debris, except she wasn’t killed.

Instead, the article claimed, she walked away apparently unscathed, and everything she touched froze.  The police spent a long time chasing her, thinking she was a terrorist, but the power plant turned to ice around her and she slipped away.

The Shiganshina plant was decommissioned, completely defunct after the incident, and the woman vanished.  No one even got a proper look at her to describe her to the authorities.

But that an accident would change someone’s entire biology. . .  Superpowers. . .

Eren sat on the ground and clutched his aching head in his hands.  No, nothing made sense; he sincerely hoped Armin could help him with that.

Right as that thought crossed his mind, the low rumbling of a car approached, growing in frequency as it drew closer.  Eren stood, grinning with relief when he recognized it, even more so when it pulled over and the driver honked, the doors clicking unlocked.

Probably Eren’s favorite of Armin’s many good qualities was that he never beat around the bush.

When Eren slumped in the passenger seat of his car, he immediately wondered, “How the fuck did you end up out here?”

“Uh, would you believe it was because I missed the bus?” Eren said, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

Armin gaped at him disbelievingly, so he explained sprinting to catch up and then winding up in a cornfield.

“Then why didn’t you _sprint back_?” Armin demanded.

“I was afraid I’d end up overshooting again,” Eren admitted.  At his friend’s continued skepticism, he added, “It’s a perfectly rational fear.”

“Eren, you don’t _do_ rational.  And what the fuck happened to your shoes?”  His tone was beginning to border on hysteria.

Eren looked down at his feet and slid them against the rug.  He felt the threads on the bottom and tickling between his toes.  He twisted his ankle sideways and peered at the exposed skin; his shoes’ soles were completely gone, probably as demolished as his discarded jacket, while the tops were simply a bit frayed, the damage similar to that of his jeans and shirt, and shoelaces untied.

It was a wonder he hadn’t tripped over them yet.

“Uh. . .”  Eren couldn’t conjure the words to reassure Armin, but he seemed to calm himself.

“Never mind,” he said with a sigh.  “We’ll figure it out at home; you look exhausted.”

* * *

The whole ninety-minute car drive back to Trost saw Eren nodding off intermittently, with periods of restlessness in between.

“You’re fidgeting again,” Armin commented for what was probably the thirteenth time.

“Sorry,” Eren said, also for the thirteenth time.  He clutched his knees and drummed his fingertips against them, peculiarly wired, although if the last hour was anything to go by, that would soon change.

“Hannes got promoted,” he told Armin by way of conversation.

Armin turned down the volume knob on his radio, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture fading away right as it approached the crescendo.  He nodded in agreement with Eren’s words.  “I heard.”

“We were supposed to celebrate tonight,” Eren added a little guiltily.

“I can understand how your plans must’ve changed.”

Eren smiled slightly.  “Yeah.”  Then, worry prickled at his skin.  “You didn’t tell Mikasa, did you?”

“If I had, she would’ve deserted her beat and come herself.”

“Okay, good.”  Eren sagged in relief; the last thing he needed was Mikasa stressing over him even more.

Armin turned his music back up, and Eren caught the chimes and clock sounds at the beginning of ‘Time’.  He glanced at Armin and commented, “You seriously have the weirdest taste in music.”

Armin grinned unabashedly.

* * *

“First thing’s first,” Armin said as he parked outside Eren’s apartment building.  “I’m sleeping over.”

“That’s really not—“

“I’m sleeping over,” Armin interrupted, narrowing his eyes at Eren as if daring him to protest.

Eren sighed, rubbing his drooping eyes.  “Fine,” he said, “but I’m knocking out as soon as I’m inside.”

“Fair enough.  We’ll deal with your, uh, _powers_ tomorrow.”

Eren looked at him skeptically.  “Don’t you have work?”

“I too have taken the day off,” Armin admitted.  “I think we have some work to do.”

* * *

Midnight saw Eren passed out on his bed, still dressed in his mistreated clothes.  His sleep was sound, free of dreams, but he still woke up around six from force of habit.  His movement was sluggish, so different from the jerkiness of his limbs the previous day.  But he bolted up in bed, immediately alert, when he remembered Levi’s instructions.

He grabbed for his phone, where it lay, plugged into a power outlet, on his bedside table, unlocked it, and dialed Mikasa.  _Don’t be asleep, don’t be asleep, don’t be asleep._

“Eren?” she said, picking up after the third ring.

“Mikasa, can you do me a favor?”  He was really on a roll, asking for all these _favors_ ; his relief that his two best friends loved him unconditionally was tangible.

“What is it?”

“Uh, I was supposed to give Annie a file this morning, but I’m not coming into work today.”

“Why not?”

_Oh, shit._   “Uh. . .  I’m sick,” he lied quickly, coughing into his hand for good measure.

“Where’s the file?” Mikasa wondered.  “And I’ll bring you some soup later.”

“No!” Eren said immediately.  Then, trying to stay calm, he added, “Look, I can take care of myself, and if I need anything, well, it’s a Saturday, so Sasha and Connie are next door.”

“Okay. . .”  She sounded doubtful but didn’t press.

“And the file is on my desk,” Eren added.  “Tell Annie that I added my report on the blood analysis.”

“Okay,” she repeated more firmly.  “Get some rest, yeah?  And don’t forget to drink lots of fluids and vitamin C.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”  Now that the more immediate dilemma was out of the way, he realized how hungry he was.  He coughed again, and after a sufficient amount of fake wheezing, bid Mikasa goodbye.

Right as he set his phone back on his nightstand, Armin barged into his bedroom without so much as knocking.

“H-hey!” Eren protested.  “You can’t just do that!”

“Why not?” Armin said, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Because maybe I was, like, masturbating?”

Armin didn’t look too impressed with his excuse.  “I overheard you talking to Mikasa,” he admitted nonchalantly.  “You know, you’ll have to get used to lying, at least if you want to keep your ‘superpowers’ a secret.”

Shame pricked at Eren, and he bowed his head.  “I know,” he said solemnly.

Armin nodded at the doorway behind him.  “Anyway, we need to make the most of our day off, yeah?  Come on; cook breakfast.”

Eren rolled his eyes but swung his legs over the side of the bed, getting dressed in jeans and a worn t-shirt before Armin even left his bedroom.

“Impressive,” Armin said, his eyes wide with astonishment.  “I almost didn’t believe you.”

Like the adult he truly was, Eren stuck his tongue out at Armin, who paid him no mind as he went into the kitchen and rummaged through the refrigerator.

“It’s like you’re my roommate without actually helping with the rent or groceries,” Eren observed, watching as Armin pulled out a carton of eggs, a package of turkey bacon, a stick of butter, and half-gallon of milk.  “You sleep on my couch, help yourself to my food, and barge into my room without knocking.  Might as well make it official, huh?”

“Are you propositioning me?” Armin wondered, turning to face him.

Eren grabbed two frying pans from the cabinet by the stove, flipped the switch for the fan, and glanced to the side at Armin.  “Yeah.  How many eggs do you want?”

“Uh, three,” Armin said, appraising Eren as he buttered both pans and turned on the burners, the flames flickering blue and orange.

“So, Armin, will you be my roommate?” Eren said, glancing sideways at him while he cracked an egg.  “Or do you want me to get on one knee?”  He cracked open the rest and used a wooden spoon to scramble them while starting with the bacon.

Armin rolled his eyes but answered quite seriously, “Sorry, Eren, I can’t.  My grandfather lives with me and he’s, well, old.  If you need a roommate, why don’t you ask Mikasa?”

“Uh, in case you haven’t noticed, I just manifested superspeed, and I already decided that I can’t tell her about it.”

“You could.”

“Can’t, because I, um, had an idea. . .”  He poured a generous amount of milk on the cooking eggs and flipped the bacon.

Armin sighed, hands on his hips as if he was about to lecture him on the dangers of swimming without water wings.  “Your ideas are always _interesting,_ but do I want to know?”

“Yeah,” Eren said, “because I kind of need your help.”  He punctuated his statement by shutting off the burner under the bacon, the pleasant sizzle music to his ears.

“So what is it?”

“What if I, like, used these powers or whatever for—“

“Eren,” Armin interrupted, apparently catching on immediately, “you’re not from a _comic book._ ”

He waved the egg-flecked wooden spoon at Armin and argued, “So?  This is real, and I have them, so I might as well use them, right?”

“Eren, it’s really not a good idea.”

He ignored Armin in favor of pulling a couple of plates from a cabinet and divvying out the bacon unequally between them.  He knew his guest didn’t have a big appetite, and Eren, well, he was ravenous.

“If you’re worried about me getting hurt,” Eren said in what he hoped was a reasonable tone, “I’ll be careful.  I’m fast, like, really fast, so I can dodge punches and whatever.”

“And what about guns?  You really think you’re faster than a bullet?”

Eren shrugged, spinning the last burner into the off position and nibbling on a strip of bacon.  “Look, I kind of get frustrated stuck in the lab all the time,” he explained steadily.  “Sometimes I wish I’d gone to the police academy with Mikasa instead.”

“But?”

“But if I was a regular cop, I wouldn’t really have access to old files.”

“Eren, you’re not. . .”  When he didn’t say anything, Armin repeated, “Your mom?”

Eren simply divided the eggs between his and Armin’s plates.

“So _that’s_ why you were pulling all of those all-nighters,” he realized.  “Wow, I can’t believe I didn’t know. . .”

“Well, Mikasa knew,” Eren admitted as he found a pair of spotty forks.  He handed one to Armin and began digging into his eggs.  “She told me to let it rest, but I couldn’t.”  He gagged and grabbed for the salt shaker.

“Okay, so what do you think being a _superhero_ is going to help?”  Armin started returning everything back to the refrigerator, except he tossed the empty bacon packet and egg carton into the trash.

“Shiganshina’s a really shitty place and the police don’t really do much there,” Eren said around a mouthful of egg.  “Maybe if it was better, my mother wouldn’t have died.”

“But your dad—“

“We don’t know that,” Eren insisted unceremoniously.

Armin sighed, shaking his head.  He pushed his food around on his plate, gaze thoughtful, before he said, “All right, I’ll help you with. . .whatever, I guess.”

Eren grinned at him.  “Thanks, Armin, you really are the best.”

Armin blushed pink at the praise.  “Eh,” he said with a shrug.  Then he began to eat with more gusto, commenting, “You’re usually an awful cook, but your breakfast’s not too bad.”

“Yeah, well, my diet is mostly sandwiches,” Eren retorted with a frown.

“For your sake then, marry someone that can cook.”

* * *

Armin grabbed a memo pad off of the living room coffee table, flipped through the first few pages, and held out his hand.

“What?” Eren said, looking at it.  “If you want a high five, I’m really not in the mood.”

“You have pens?” Armin asked, glancing over the pad at him.

“Oh, yeah,” he replied sheepishly.  He stood up from the sofa and wandered into his apartment’s second, mostly empty bedroom, picked a blue pen from the desk in the corner, and returned to the living room.  He tossed the pen at Armin, who fumbled but caught it.

“Okay, so, let’s talk about your ‘symptoms’,” Armin decided.

“I’m not really sick,” Eren complained, resuming his seat beside his friend.  He propped his feet up on the coffee table, fidgeting.

“Well, you’re not _normal_ ,” Armin pointed out.  “First there’s the obvious:  you can run really fast.”

Eren grunted in assent.

“Then there’s the amount of food you eat, and how often you eat since, well, since—“

“Since I was struck by lightning.”  Eren glanced up at Armin, exchanging glances.

“You think so?” Armin said, his tone asking a confirmation.

Eren nodded solemnly.

“That’s some special lightning,” Armin mused.  “What else?”

“I think I sleep more,” Eren admitted.  “And I get tired quicker.”

Armin scribbled on the memo pad.  “Makes sense,” he said.  “Your bodily functions have sped up, so you burn energy faster.  I mean, I guess you do _everything_ involuntary faster.  How are your heart rate and pulse?”

Eren shrugged.  “I think they’re pretty normal, actually,” he replied.  “Maybe a bit faster than before?  Or I just haven’t noticed.”

“Yeah, you probably wouldn’t pick up on that,” Armin conceded.  “So what about other involuntary functions?”

“Such as. . .?”

“How quickly do you get off?”

“Armin!”  Eren, shocked at the blunt question, threw a pillow at his head.

“What?” he said with a shrug, ignoring the impact to his ear.  “I’m just trying to cover all the bases.”

Eren stifled a laugh but said, “I don’t know; I haven’t since before anyway.”

“Okay. . .  Reflexes?”

He leaned his head against the back of the couch, wiggling his foot.  “I feel like they’ve definitely improved,” he said, a little pleased with himself.  He remembered the test-tube dropping incident from the day before.

“You know,” Armin said as he made another note, “you’re taking this all very well.  I would’ve thought you’d be more shocked.”

“Maybe I’ve had enough shock in my life,” Eren muttered.

A knock sounded from the door, startling both Eren and Armin.

“Who the hell. . .?”  Eren stood, shaking the stiffness out of his elbows, and walked to the door.  Without bothering with the peephole, he opened it to see his neighbors.  “Hi.”

“Hey, Eren,” Sasha greeted, leaning forward and wrapping her arms around his torso momentarily.

“Eren,” Connie said with a mock solemn nod, holding out his hand for Eren to shake before he changed his mind and embraced him as Sasha had.

“Uh, what are you doing here?” Eren wondered as his neighbors made themselves at home in his apartment.  He exchanged a bemused glance with Armin, who smiled comfortingly.

“We wanted to see how you were doing since you came home so late last night,” Sasha confessed.  “We were kind of worried.”  She glanced at Armin and held out her hand.  “Hey, I’m Sasha.”

“I’m Connie,” Connie said, offering Armin his hand as well.

“Uh. . .”  Armin, to his credit, only looked slightly uncomfortable with being bombarded by two complete strangers, but he managed to shake both of their hands.  “I’m Armin.”

“He’s my friend,” Eren said quickly lest his gossipy neighbors draw their own conclusions.  “We work together.”

“Oh, you’re a CSI guy too?” Connie inquired.

“Kind of?  I just work with the computers and digital technology though, trace email addresses and locate cell phones and. . .”  He trailed off when he noticed that Eren’s neighbors were no longer listening.

“Don’t you have work?” Eren asked them, raising an eyebrow.

“Our shifts start in an hour,” Sasha explained.  “So have you cracked open that vodka yet?”

“No, I’ve been busy,” Eren told her truthfully.  “Like I am now,” he added pointedly.

Fortunately, Sasha got the hint, as she stood up, dragging Connie with her.  “You should come for dinner sometime, Eren,” she suggested.

“Nice meeting you, Armin,” Connie called from the doorway, waving.

And then they were gone, the door swinging shut behind them.

Eren flopped down on the sofa beside Armin again.  “Uh, sorry about that. . .”

Armin shrugged.  “They seemed nice,” he said without irony.

“They are,” Eren agreed, “but they’re pretty fucking nosy.  I mean, they’re both nurses, so maybe it’s in the job description?”  He sighed through his nose.  “Anyway, they assume too much about me; the first time Mikasa came round they asked if she was my girlfriend.”

“Deflect questions like that by not being single,” Armin suggested.

Eren snorted.  “How does one go about doing that again?”

Without turning, Armin pointed to a spot behind him.  Eren followed the direction till his gaze fell on a vase of wilting roses.  He scowled and immediately protested, “No.”  _Not after yesterday._ He made a mental note to throw the flowers out as soon as his guest left.

Armin chuckled but didn’t press it and instead asked, “Are they dating?”

Eren shrugged.  “Do I look like I know?  Are they siblings?  Are they married?  The world may never know.”

“Well, they brought up a good point,” Armin said.

“Oh, what?”

“When was the last time you got drunk?”

“Uh, my birthday I think,” Eren replied.  “Why?”

“Your tolerance might’ve changed too,” Armin explained.

“Ha, fuck yeah.”

* * *

Walking into work _normally_ after the epiphanies of the last day-and-a-half was excruciating.  Eren found himself overthinking everything:

Did he _usually_ walk that way?

Was the lab always so close to his desk?

Had that stain on the carpet always been there?

Why was Officer Gin staring at him?

Armin muttering, “Act natural”, beside him wasn’t helpful at all.

They passed Levi’s office, the door ajar, and he called, “Jaeger, a word.”

_Shit shit shit._   Eren froze, exchanging a worried glance with Armin, who patted him on the shoulder as he continued to his own desk.  Then, he inhaled deeply, trying to calm his rapid heartbeat, and shoved past the door.

“So you’ve missed quite a few days lately,” Levi said without much fanfare.  He had his feet propped up on his desk, leaning back in his chair.  “Arlert told me you were sick yesterday?”

“Yeah,” Eren said, holding his hand up and fake-coughing into his palm.

“Cough into your elbow,” Levi suggested.  “It’s more sanitary.”

“Right.”  Eren wiped his hand on the seat of his pants, a little self-conscious under his boss’s scrutiny.

“You’re not going to get sick again _tomorrow_ , are you?”

“Oh, no,” Eren reassured, waving his hands.  “My doctor just told me that my immunity is kind of weak from, you know, getting struck by lightning.”

“Really,” Levi said, tone rather skeptical.

_No._ “Yes.”  He remembered Armin’s painful words:   _You know, you’ll have to get used to lying._

“Interesting,” he commented, without sounding interested at all.  Then, he held up a folder, shaking it slightly till Eren reached forward and grabbed it.  “Go meet with the coroner on this case; I think you’ll find it interesting.”

“Uh, okay,” Eren said warily.  He turned around, left the office, and made his way between crowded desks, almost tripping over a chair that was sticking out into the aisle.  As he ventured towards the medical examination lab, he flipped through the file.

So far, it was just a police report on a body discovered outside of a mansion just last night, the cause of death being a slit throat; he supposed the coroner would have more to say in any case.

Eren pushed the lab door open to see Mike Zacharius scratching notes onto a clipboard.  He glanced up at the sound of Eren’s footsteps, smirked, and set the board aside.  In front of him was the examination table, where a prone body under a sheet lay.

“You smell like smoke,” Mike commented once Eren shut the door behind him.

“I, uh, what?”  Eren stared at him, not quite sure what to say to that.

“I hope you haven’t started smoking.”

“No,” Eren said quickly.

“Good.”  He nodded approvingly, then twitched aside the top of the sheet to show a round face and balding scalp.  “This is Dimo Reeves, a banker; he was found dead last night.”

“Yeah, I already read the file.”

“Oh, that was quick.”  Eren opened his mouth to offer an explanation, but Mike just plowed on, “Anyway, it’s all in the file, except I now have his I.D. to provide, and, well, this.”  He reached under the sheet and pulled out the dead man’s arm by its wrist.  “A tattoo,” he said, pointing to a swath of organized ink on the bicep, “and it was done postmortem.”

“How can you tell?” Eren wondered, leaning forward slightly to take a closer look at the tattoo.

“It was still bleeding when he was found,” Mike explained.

“Why?” Eren asked.

“Why what?”

“Why a postmortem tattoo?”

“How should I know?” Mike said mutinously.  “I’m the coroner, not the detective.”

“Uh, right, sorry.”  Eren then glimpsed the design properly, jaw falling slack when he recognized the mouth and crooked teeth.  He considered telling Mike that it was familiar to him, but thought better of it.  “Um, I’ll just take your report.”

“Sure.”  Mike passed him a few sheets of paper, which Eren stuck into the folder without looking at them.  He waved goodbye and made his way back to his desk.

_Why did Levi think he’d be interested in this?_

Eren dropped the Reeves file unceremoniously on his desk, grimacing when all the papers fell out, but he managed to pick them up and reorganize them before they hit the floor.

He sat and reclined in his chair, turning on his computer.  He tapped his fingers impatiently against the keyboard while waiting for it to reboot, wondering if the machine had always been this slow.

His sense of time was so distorted now, he realized.  Another thing to add to Armin’s memo pad.

Eren clicked on the browser and made his way to his email, deleting spam and reading a mass reminder sent out to the whole police department by Chief Erwin Smith.  Apparently the mayor’s office was coming to inspect.

Then he found the email from drmercury.  He swallowed, opened it, and read:

_We are all mistaken sometimes; sometimes we do wrong things, things that have bad consequences. But it does not mean we are evil, or that we cannot be trusted ever afterward._

“Who the fuck _are_ you?” he demanded of his computer, but of course it didn’t respond, even though he glared at it.

_Well, if looks could kill. . ._

* * *

“So if you really want to be a superhero,” Armin explained, “do you want to do it by the book – I mean, by the comic book?”

They were once more sitting in Eren’s living room, Armin’s backpack open on the floor in front of them and the memo pad waiting to be written in lying on the table.

“You don’t have to mock me,” Eren mumbled irritably.

“Okay, I’ll rephrase that,” Armin decided.  “Do you want people to know who you are or not?  Because you have to consider that the police won’t be too pleased with you for one, and you _do_ work for them.”

“So you’re asking me mask or no mask?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m asking.”

“Mask,” Eren said quickly.

“That’s what I thought you’d say,” Armin said, leaning down and reaching into his bag to pull out. . .a red body suit.

Eren took it from him and held it out, examining it.  “It’s. . .red.”

“Yes,” Armin agreed as if Eren wasn’t stating the obvious.

He eyed his friend suspiciously.  “Why is it red?”

Armin rolled his eyes.  “Because I want you to look like a human stop sign when you’re running around.”

“Uh, you do?”

“Sarcasm, Eren.”  Armin patted his shoulder consolingly.  “Sorry, but this was the only color of that particular fabric the store had.”

“And what’s so special about this fabric?”

“It’s durable and lowers wind resistance, all that stuff that a guy frequently breaking the sound barrier needs in his clothes, especially considering the state of them when I picked you up a few days ago.”

“Great,” Eren enthused.  “I’ll just keep this in my backpack all the time.  Where’s the mask?”

Armin threw another bit of fabric at him, this one as a sort of ski mask, except it only covered his head and the top half of his face.

Armin said, “Well, happy superheroing, and don’t forget to wear rubber-soled boots.”

* * *

At half-past eight, Eren stuffed the ugly red suit into his backpack and threw on a pair of basketball shorts, leaving his apartment under the guise of ‘jogging in the park’ or something should someone ask.  Only once he stood outside his building did it occur to him that he could’ve just dressed in the stupid suit inside and sprinted out before his nurse neighbors so much as blinked.

He ended up ducking into a nearby alley, changing in a flash, and ditching his backpack there, making a mental note to pick it up when he returned.  Then, with a half-formed plan of ‘go to Shiganshina and see what I find’, he took off.

The eerie silence of running faster than sound was not something he’d get used to easily, but his eyes were beginning to adjust, images as detailed as if he saw them through the lens of a microscope rather than the streams of light and blurs of his first sprint.  He still struggled against the liquid-like air, but Armin was right about the suit:  it offered less wind resistance and it didn’t tear and expose his skin.

Time passed as effortlessly as it had before, and Eren began to wonder if it would seem slower to him from now on, if minutes would stretch into agonizing hours, if a two-hour movie would span the length of the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy.

He halted at the center of Shiganshina, decelerating in a blink, and stared around, eyes falling on the familiar, dilapidated buildings of downtown:  a convenience store advertising cigarettes and lottery tickets, an Albertson’s with only half of the letters illuminated, a movie theater with peeling posters in the windows. . .

The street wasn’t crowded either, a few drunks stumbling along, calling to women that walked in groups of three or four.  And no one paid any mind to the man in the red suit.

Eren took a few paces further down the street, flinching when he heard the harsh sound of a speeding car engine and, sure enough, a yellow sports car thundered through the square at _way too fast to be safe_ , the driver pumping his fist in the air.

Eren smirked as he took off after the car, and it was all too easy to catch up to it, to jog alongside it and tap on the window.

The driver shot him an annoyed look, then promptly did a double take, mouthing, _What the fuck are you?_ He rolled down his window.  “What the fuck are you, man?” he demanded, loudly to be heard over the sound of the roaring air.

The car’s speed was practically a pleasant morning jog for Eren, so he managed to keep pace as he retorted, “Don’t know, but you should really pull over, yeah?”

“Uh. . .”  The car jolted, fishtailing, and Eren jumped out of the way to avoid the machine’s thrashing.  It jerked as it slowed, the driver bumping his head on the steering wheel.

“So you stole this car, huh?” Eren wondered as the driver continued to break.

He gaped at him, eyes filled with shock, and nodded hurriedly.

“Okay then,” Eren said, reaching through the window and tugging the driver out.  He tossed him to the sidewalk, ignoring the car as it came to a stop.  “You should call the police, yeah?”

The thief stared up at Eren, cradling his nose, which had been knocked in the impact, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a phone.  “I’m calling now, okay?” he reassured him.

Eren watched as he dialed 9-1-1 and reported the theft of a Corvette, then dashed away before he could hang up, blazing a path down the main street.  He kicked over a thug beating a smaller, brightly dressed man as he passed, and snatched a purse from a purse-snatcher and deposited in front of the woman that he’d ditched.  He continued in much the same way, pulling a would-be burglar out of a third-story window and shutting it, speeding away before he heard the clang of the man’s impact on the fire escape.

All small crimes, all crimes that Shiganshina saw every day, every hour, every minute, but when his adrenaline faded and exhaustion caused him to stumble every few steps, he decided it was time to go home.

Trost was significantly quieter at this time of night, and the peace of this city almost knocked the breath out of him.  If only everywhere was like this. . .

Eren returned to the alley near his building, changed into his usual clothes, and retrieved his backpack before climbing the stairs at a typical human pace, head bowed with weariness.

Once he was inside his apartment, he postponed a much-needed shower in favor of dialing Armin.

He didn’t answer, which was unsurprising considering the time, but Eren left him a voicemail:

“Hey, Armin, I did it!  I stopped grand theft auto. . .”

* * *

“Someone in Shiganshina called 9-1-1 about a stolen car last night,” Officer Gin was telling Officer Schulz in the break room during lunchtime, “but when we got there, all we found was a deserted Corvette with the door wide open.”

“So. . .?” Schulz prompted.

“So we found a guy – barely more than a kid, I think he’s twenty – lying, knocked out, on the street a few yards away with a bloody nose and a bump the size of an egg on his forehead.  When we shined a light on his face, he opened his eyes and mumbled something about a red blur.”

“The fuck?”

Eren listened to the two cops discussing his evening exploit, trying to eat his third sandwich as nonchalantly as possible, but it was difficult with the meaningful looks Armin was shooting his way.

“Anyway, we arrested him and questioned him a bit, even though he confessed to the theft pretty quickly.  Apparently this ‘red blur’ was another guy, but in a red suit, that just appeared out of nowhere, asked him to pull over, and pulled him out of the car before he’d even cut the engine.”

“Huh, surprised he didn’t get hurt worse then.  How fast was he driving?”

Eren perked his ears; he was curious about this too.

“He said ninety.”

“Damn, a kid driving at ninety through Shiganshina at night?  It’s amazing no one else got hurt.”

A tap on the table in front of Eren grabbed his attention, and he glanced over to see Armin sliding a note over.

_Seriously?  You could’ve hurt someone else._

Eren shrugged and mouthed, _I was being careful._

Armin just rolled his eyes in reply.

* * *

Eren half-heartedly skimmed through some of the files on his desk, lamenting the loss of the Maria folder.  _Fuck you, Jean; she was a good person, she was rich but gave money to good causes.  Why can’t you let her rest in peace?_

When he grabbed one of the newer cases – the Dimo Reeves murder – he opened it, his jaw falling slack as he noticed red ink on the top page.

_Disregard the tattoo._

“What the fuck?” Eren mumbled, rifling through the pages for more details, but nothing made sense, nothing. . .

He stood up and made his way to Levi’s office, drumming his knuckles on the door.

“Come in,” Levi called from inside.

Eren shoved the door open and entered to see Levi limply holding a phone to his ear.  He raised an eyebrow at the intruder, a question in his dull eyes.

Eren showed him the Reeves case.  “Why?” he said, brandishing the first paper.

Levi grabbed it, shifting the phone against his head slightly, and stared at it for a moment before saying, “It can’t be helped.  I was told that the tattoo wasn’t important.”

“But Mike said it was _postmortem_ ,” Eren pointed out.  “That’s just fu-weird.”

“I don’t care if you want to swear, Jaeger,” Levi commented mildly, “but you and I both accept orders from above.”

Eren sighed, grimacing, then said, “Well, I already found as much as I could on Reeves.  I’ll pass it along to Detective Ral.”

“No,” his boss protested.  “I was told that Detective Leonhart is to take this case.”

“O-oh,” Eren said, frowning.  “I’ll go give it to her then.”

“Yes, do that,” Levi said.  “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m no longer on hold.”

“R-right,” Eren stuttered, leaving the ex-detective’s enigmatic presence.

* * *

Within days, Eren started to eat his lunch while checking his email and spending his actual midday break taking naps.  His nighttime endeavors were taking a toll on his sleep.

“F-fuck,” he hissed when the beeping of the centrifuge ending its cycle jerked him out of yet another stupor.  He shook his head, trying to dispel his exhaustion, and lifted the lid of the centrifuge and removed his samples.

One of them almost slipped from his grip, but he caught it, smiling a bit at his quick reaction.  He could _definitely_ get used to the fast reflexes.  Maybe it was a reasonable trade:  less sleep, more speed.

Or not, he thought when a yawn split his face, right as Hannes barged into the lab.

“H-hi,” Eren said, holding his hand over his mouth, “uh, Captain.”

Hannes grinned.  “Still getting used to that,” he commented cheerfully.  “So it’s Friday, huh?”

Eren nodded, popping the caps from the centrifuge tubes.  “So what?”

“So let’s make up our missed celebration,” Hannes suggested eagerly.  “I’ll buy you a few beers.”

Eren smiled regretfully and said, “Can’t.  I already have plans with Armin tonight.”

“Oh, that’s really too bad,” said Hannes.  “Well, watch out for that sprinter that fancies himself a superhero, okay?”

“Sure,” Eren said, eyes widening a bit as Hannes left the lab.

Later, in the break room once more, the gossip on Eren’s evening activities amongst the beat cops was ripe:

“Why doesn’t Chief Smith put out a warrant for his arrest?  He’s doing our job!”

“Maybe that’s _why_ there’s no warrant; if he wants to take some of the burden off us, let him!”

“That’s bullshit!  He’s not a cop, he’s just beating up thugs for stealing cars.”

Eren tuned out the usual conversation of the week while he laid his head on his arms, closing his eyes, but they sprang back open when a familiar voice chimed in, “He should back down so he doesn’t hurt himself or anyone else.”

Eren straightened his back and looked up to see Mikasa entering the break room, carrying a steaming mug.  She ignored the flabbergasted expressions that the other two officers were giving her and took the seat beside Eren, sliding the cup to him.  “I really think you should consider coffee,” she suggested.

Eren eyed the black contents dubiously and shook his head even as he rubbed his tired eyes.

“If you don’t like it black, you can add milk and sugar, you know.”

“Mm, no,” Eren denied immediately.  He stood up, realizing that it was time for him to leave work anyway.

Mikasa followed him out of the room.  “Are you finished today then?”  When Eren nodded, she added, “Good.  Now go home and take a nap.”

Eren scowled at her.  “Stop telling me what to do.”

“I’ll stop telling you what to do when you learn to take care of yourself; and you’ve been eating a lot lately but haven’t been gaining any weight. . .  Are you okay?”

“Fantastic,” Eren said, waving goodbye to Armin as they passed by his desk.

Mikasa sighed.  “Well, if you say so. . .”  She pushed open the door to the precinct, holding it open as Eren passed through behind her.

He pulled the hood of his jacket over his head at the light drizzle, and he and Mikasa walked in silence towards the bus stop, until she announced:

“My boss told me that he thinks I’m ready for the detective exam.”

Eren snapped his head around to gape at her.  “Wow, already?”  When she nodded, he said, “That’s amazing!”

She smiled a little.  “I know, but. . .”

“But what?”

“It’s still early, isn’t it?” Mikasa confessed.  “I’ve only been a cop for a few years; shouldn’t I have more experience?”

“Learn on the job,” Eren suggested.

“Yeah, but—“

Eren placed a hand on her shoulder, halting their walk.  “Mikasa, go for it,” he encouraged, staring at her intently.  “You’ll be great at it; you’re smart and athletic and fair.”

Mikasa met his gaze, her gray eyes widening momentarily, as if she saw something reassuring in him.  Then, she said, “I’ll apply tomorrow.”

“Excellent.”

They resumed walking, and then Mikasa wondered, “So what have you and Armin been doing so much lately?  And why is it depriving you of sleep?”

“Oh, you know, manly stuff,” Eren, startled by her question, replied as nonchalantly as possible.  _Fuck fuck fuck._

Mikasa raised an eyebrow at him.  “Like what kind of ‘manly stuff’?” she said suspiciously.  “Have you and Armin been dating behind my back?”

“What?”  Eren gaped at her.  “No, that’s ridiculous.  We’ve been, like, playing video games and, uh, watching sports. . .”  He trailed off when he spotted the subtle twist in her eyebrows that indicated he’d said something stupid, which he supposed all the rather sexist, not to mention dishonest, shit spewing out of his mouth _was_.

“You don’t play video games,” Mikasa pointed out.

“I think I have a GameCube buried somewhere in my closet,” Eren input quietly.

As if he hadn’t said anything, she continued, “And Armin hates sports, and you’re a bad spectator.”

“Hey, that’s. . .completely true,” Eren conceded, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

“It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me,” Mikasa said after a moment of silence, her tone a little hurt.

“It is?”

She nodded, smiling slightly.  “I’d probably ruin your fun anyway, right?”

Eren coughed awkwardly.  “Th-that’s not true!” he denied immediately.  “What we’re doing isn’t even fun!”

“Hmm, well, as long as it isn’t dangerous.”

_Shit shit shit._   Eren forced a laugh.  “It’s definitely not dangerous,” he said quickly, waving his hands to emphasize.  “It’s so safe, FisherPrice would approve.”

Mikasa gave him a doubtful look, but even as she shrugged and wrapped him in a quick goodbye hug, she didn’t press for more information.  “Just be careful, okay Eren?”

He returned the embrace, touching his chin to her shoulder.  “I will,” he said truthfully.  “I promise.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quote in the email is from Alice Croggon. (Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)
> 
> So I actually finished Chapter 4 before this because it had a scene that I was really looking forward to, so I’ll be posting that right after this one. Fair warning: I write stuff out of order a lot, so if stuff seems inconsistent/choppy or doesn’t transition well, please tell me. I’m my own beta, so there’s that too.
> 
> Also I’m so sorry; I feel like the end of this chapter was awful, but I hope as a whole it was enjoyable to read.


	4. Full Speed Ahead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shit gets real, and Eren and Jean take steps to make amends.
> 
> Also where this AU shows its true colors as a coffee shop AU (not really).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for implied attempted rape, a bit of violence, and blood/injury.
> 
> I’m actually really pleased with how this chapter turned out, even if it is a bit darker.

Eren figured the worst thing about sprinting faster than the speed of sound was that he couldn’t hear anything while in motion, not even gunshots.

A large man with a large bald head and skin so pale it practically glowed in the dark stared up at him hatefully.  A livid tattoo of a rose entwined in thorns – the symbol of the Rose Brigade gang – stood out on his fleshy arm.  Just behind him, another man that might’ve been the first’s identical twin clutched a thin, wiry woman tightly, her arms pinned to her sides by his.

Eren, watching her flail, kicking at the gangster and shouting curses, her face livid, had to give her kudos even as he faced the bag of shit pointing a switchblade at him.

“That’s not gonna help you,” he told knife-wielding Bag of Shit.  He dashed forward, grabbing his wrist and grappling the knife away from him right as Bag of Shit’s grip loosened.

“So _you’re_ the guy on the news, huh?” the other guy, Sack of Dicks, commented over the screeching of his hostage.  “You’re not just some idiot that likes to walk around wearing red?”

“Ha, no, I’m both of those,” Eren said.  He knocked Bag of Shit aside and sprinted for Sack of Dicks, spinning around him before he could react and pressing the tip of the confiscated knife to the back of his neck, right over his spinal column.  “So are you gonna let her go?” he muttered dangerously.  “Or do I have to make you?”

“What’s a skinny shit like you—“

Eren tapped his neck with the side of the blade.  “This is your spinal cord,” he explained slowly, irritably, as if talking to someone incredibly dumb.  “If I cut it, you won’t be able to walk or _hold some girl down_ for the rest of your life.”

_Please let her go, you Sack of Dicks._

He did:  the woman fell to her hands and knees, grumbling, “Fuck.”

Eren didn’t remove the knife from Sack of Dicks’ neck.  He glanced at the woman and said, “Can you run away?”

She eyed him suspiciously but nodded, stood up, if a little shakily, and jogged away down the alley, sticking up both of her middle fingers as she went.

Eren grinned to himself, removed the knife, tossed it into a nearby dumpster, and was about to ditch with the fond hope that they wouldn’t be forcing anyone ever with the threat of him watching, when he realized Bag of Shit was missing.

“Hey, where’s your—“

Eren couldn’t tell where the sound came from but he knew he needed to leave.  Maybe he could outrun it. . .

A pinprick of pain in his left arm, followed by a flare, but he ignored it as best he could, kept running and pretending that he couldn’t feel the blood flowing out of his body.  He wove in and around late-night party-goers, their cheerful faces part of some other world that didn’t involve this horrific _hole_ in his body, tearing at his nerves.

He made it into his apartment, slamming the door shut behind him, and crumpled to the floor.  He curled around the wound, muttering curses, wondering why he’d been stupid enough to expect to never get injured _just because he was faster than all those thugs._

_Fucking shit._

Eren struggled to his feet and trudged to his bedroom, trailing blood on the carpet.  He knew he needed to get the bullet out of his arm, and sutures, but he couldn’t go to the hospital. . .

With one arm, he tore off the suit and slipped on his sleeping pants.  It took all of three seconds, but to him it felt more like three hours.

His neighbor, Sasha, was a nurse; a nosy nurse, but a nurse all the same.

He ditched his apartment and deliberated outside his neighbors’ door, right fist hovering over it while his left arm bled all over the landing.  Then he decided to knock.

Eren clutched his arm while he waited, shifting from foot to foot and biting his lip.  When Sasha opened the door, surprise on her face but a smile on her lips, he interrupted, “Sasha, I need your help.”

“Uh, sure?” she said, eyeing his bare chest dubiously.  “What’s wrong?”

He held up his arm and watched her mouth go slack with astonishment.

“Eren, what did you do?” she demanded.

“Doesn’t matter, but there’s a bullet in my arm and I need you to get it out.”

“I, uh, um, Eren, I’m just a n—“

“Don’t care,” Eren said, gritting his teeth.

“You should really go to the hos—“

“Can’t.”

“Uh, fuck, okay,” Sasha said, and Eren barely registered that it was the first time he’d heard her curse as she spun around and led him inside her apartment.

He glanced around and was unsurprised to note that it had the exact same layout as his, although the quirky, colorful furniture and decorations that he might’ve expected were absent.  Connie and Sasha, apparently, were quite normal.

Sasha grabbed his right wrist and tugged him down a hallway, into the master bedroom and to the bathroom en suite.  She pointed to the lidded toilet seat, and he obeyed the wordless command, wincing when Sasha prodded the injury.

“Holy shit Eren,” she swore.  “I didn’t think you were this kind of cop.”

“I-I’m not even technically a cop,” he said quickly.

She didn’t comment on his denial and instead turned her back to him, fishing through a medicine cabinet and pulling out a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a tube of Neosporin, and a roll of gauze.  “Unfortunately, I’m a bit short on suturing needles and thread,” she claimed with a hint of irony, glancing at Eren over her shoulder.  “You _really_ should go to the hospital.”

Eren just nodded, worried when his arm began to numb; he was exhausted too, and he feared it was partly from blood loss.

Sasha washed her hands, dried, and dumped half the bottle of isopropanol on a pair of tweezers.  “This isn’t exactly sterile, you know,” she warned as she wielded them and approached Eren.

“Just get it over with,” Eren grumbled, holding out his arm for her.

She grasped his wrist firmly, placed the tips of the tweezers right beside the injury, where Eren could see the bullet peeking out of his flesh.  “Hmm,” Sasha said, as if she was contemplating the best way to do this.

“Sasha, please hurry.”

“Y-yeah,” she agreed shakily, but her hand was steady as she stuck the tweezers into his skin.

“Fuck, ow,” Eren swore as she dug into his flesh.  The nerve endings in his arm blazed, his heart pounding in response to the pain, and he felt a peculiar itch when the bullet shifted under his skin.  He watched with a sick kind of fascination as Sasha withdrew the blood-soaked metal from his arm.

“I don’t know what to do with this,” she muttered wryly, before shrugging and dropping it and the tweezers into the sink.  “Well, as long as Connie doesn’t think I murdered anyone.”

Eren sagged in relief, even though the wound still throbbed and the skin around it still itched.  He looked on through half-lidded eyes as Sasha cleaned it with a cotton ball soaked in hydrogen peroxide.  “Why do we even have this stuff,” she mumbled to herself.

“Uh. . .”

“Ignore me,” Sasha said quickly.  “And, you know, you’re really lucky this didn’t hit the bone.”

“I’m sorry,” Eren told her.

Her eyes flitted up to his face, and her look of concentration morphed into a slight smile.  “It’s okay, Eren.  We’ve been dying to know a bit more about you since you’re so secretive; I guess this’ll just give Connie and me something to gossip about.”

Eren snorted.  He could tell she was just trying to ease his guilt, but he just said, “Thank you then.”

Sasha shrugged.  She gently set his arm on the counter beside the sink, the injury facing up.  “You _really_ need sutures.”

“I can’t go to the hospital.”

“All right, I get it,” she said exasperatedly.  “I’ll be right back.”  She turned and left the bathroom.

Eren looked around, trying to distract himself from the hole in his arm.  He grinned slightly at the _Finding Nemo_ -themed shower curtain, the smudges on the mirror that spelled ‘ily potato’, the two toothbrushes in a cup beside the faucet. . .  Everything about this bathroom screamed ‘couple’, and Eren couldn’t help but feel lonely when he considered that he didn’t even have a roommate.

He and Armin were roomies throughout college, eating together, studying for different tests together, getting bored and playing a board game together, playing pranks on Eren’s good-natured faculty mentor. . .  Even Mikasa had practically lived in their shared apartment some of the time, visiting from the police academy and joining in on their shenanigans, although she generally disapproved of Eren’s wilder ideas.

And Jean had a place in his memories too, from subtly, or so he thought, begging Eren to tutor him in chemistry to throwing paper airplanes at him hard enough that they stuck in his hair whenever he was trying to study.

Eren shook his head slightly when he heard Sasha’s soft footsteps, and she reappeared in the bathroom doorway, holding a pair of scissors.  She set about unrolling the gauze and cutting a rectangle.  She picked up Eren’s arm and wrapped it around the injury, humming something that sounded suspiciously like ‘Circle of Life’ under her breath.

“Where _is_ Connie anyway?” Eren asked when she took his right hand and made him hold onto the ends of the gauze.

“He’s at work,” she replied, turning back to the medicine cabinet and pulling out a roll of surgical tape.  “He has a late shift tonight.”

“Oh,” Eren said, not really sure what else to say to that.

Sasha cut a few pieces of tape and attached the ends of the gauze together.  “You know Eren, you don’t have to be shy,” she advised.  “You can ask me anything you like; you can ask anyone anything you like.”

“I ask people things,” Eren retorted.

“Mm, well, when was the last time you asked an acquaintance where they worked, or if they were married, or what their favorite food is, or where they grew up, or—“

“All right, I get it,” Eren interrupted mutinously.  “I don’t like prying into people’s lives; is that so bad?”

“Then how the hell do you make friends, huh?”

Eren glowered.  “Fine, I’ve got a question:  are you and Connie dating?”

Sasha looked up from his arm, gaping at him.  Then she started laughing, a weird, wheezing laugh that was actually kind of endearing.

Eren stared at her till she was done, a little annoyed even as she caught her breath.  “So?” he prompted.

“Oh, Eren, Connie and I have been married for, like, eight years.”

Eren blinked at her admission.  “I feel like I shouldn’t be this surprised.”

Sasha smirked and started to put things away.  “No, you really shouldn’t,” she said, brandishing her left hand, where a thin, gold ring inlaid with a tiny pink diamond sat.

“Um, it’s pretty,” Eren commented for lack of anything better to say.

“Yeah, it really is, isn’t it?” Sasha said, admiring it.  Then she turned on the faucet and started washing her hands.  “We got married fresh out of high school.  My dad and Connie’s parents were furious.”  She smiled fondly at the memory.

“Oh, holy shit.”

“Ha ha, yeah.”  Sasha sighed, almost dreamily.  “Anyway, try asking people questions, okay?  Maybe you could use more friends than Armin and Mikasa and whoever sent you those roses.”

“How do you still remember that?”

“I pay attention,” Sasha said with a shrug.

“We’re not friends anyway,” Eren muttered irritably.

“Oh, had a fight did you?”

“Something like that,” Eren admitted.  He scratched at the skin around the surgical tape, frowning when Sasha batted his hand away.

“How did you meet?”

Eren looked at her, surprised, but then, considering the way this conversation was reading, he really shouldn’t be.  “Well, um, we met in college.”  He paused, suddenly reluctant to continue.

Sasha nodded encouragingly.  “And how did you become friends?” she pressed.

“Well, like you said, he asked me a question. . .”

_“Not going home for Thanksgiving, Jaeger?” Jean wondered, glancing sideways at Eren._

_Eren shook his head, keeping his eyes fixed on the path ahead.  He stepped on a dried leaf, smirking when it gave a satisfying crunch._

_“Why not?” Jean prodded.  Then, his tone took a turn for the devious as he inquired, “Parents don’t want you home?”_

_Eren stopped in his tracks, clenching his fists and glaring at Jean’s back until he turned around, noticing that he was no longer walking with him.  He tilted his head sideways, questioningly._

_Eren could punch Jean, break his nose, his teeth, that stupidly sharp jaw, has done as much for even less than a rude, careless inquiry. . .  But he didn’t want to fight, not over this, so he looked Jean in the eye and said, “I don’t have parents.”_

_He stared at Eren blankly for a second, as if not quite understanding him, but when his eyes widened, a frown twisted his face and he immediately said, “Holy shit, I’m so—“_

_Eren stalked back towards Jean and, without looking at his face, interrupted, “You don’t have to apologize.”_

_They started walking again, silently, but Eren could feel Jean’s gaze on his face every so often.  “Watch where you’re going,” he told him._

_“I_ am _,” Jean protested._

_“No, you’re watching_ me _.”_

_“So, I can still walk like—“_

_Eren shoved him away, smirking slightly as Jean dropped the notebooks in his arms._

_“Oh, fuck you!” Jean shouted as Eren jogged away, grinning._

_He cursed when he tripped over an uneven bit of concrete and scowled when Jean’s laughter rang in his ears._

* * *

Sasha sent him home with the promise of coming back the next morning so that she could check on his wound.

Eren stumbled into his empty apartment, feeling a little punch drunk from the whole ordeal; he contemplated taking tomorrow as a sick day, especially when he happened to glance at the clock and notice that it actually already _was_ tomorrow.  Well, if the hole in his arm got infected, he _would_ be sick.

He gobbled down a quickly put together turkey sandwich, chugging several glasses of water to wash it down, and wandered into his bathroom.  He dug through his own medicine cabinet, all too aware of the throbbing pain in his arm, and found a bottle of Tylenol.

Eren grimaced as he read the recommended dosage.  “How long is it even gonna last?” he wondered, considering how often and how much he ate since coming into his powers.  He shrugged and took two tablets anyway, swallowing them dry.

After brushing his teeth, he was too wired to sleep, even though his muscles and bones ached, so he grabbed his ridiculous red suit and looked for the damage from the bullet.  Sure enough, one of the arms had a bloody hole in it, so he scrubbed it with soap and water until it had faded enough to at least be the same shade of red as the fabric.

He sat on his bed with the suit in his lap, contemplating the hole.  He picked at it experimentally, as if _that_ would repair it, then sighed at his unpreparedness and the fact that he didn’t own a sewing kit.

Well, it could probably wait, he thought, flinging it to the floor and reaching for his backpack, digging until he found his phone under his jeans.

To his surprise, a text message alert blinked up at him, received at one AM, a half-hour ago.  “Who the fuck else is up at one AM?” he muttered, unlocking his phone to see that it was from Jean.

_Let’s meet today/tomorrow/whatever it is now.  
It’s really important._

* * *

As Eren expected, the painkillers lost their effectiveness within an hour, so he lay on his bed without pulling back the covers, gripping his arm just above the gauze and resisting the urge to tear it off and scratch the inflamed skin.

He probably dozed off around three, a fitful sleep where he kept running away, away, away from something, and he didn’t know what it was until he looked down at his arm and saw it blown off.

Someone grinned at him with crooked teeth, a drop of blood clinging to one of them.  The ugly white lips widened slightly, as if to say something, but a siren barged into the dream.

Eren jerked up, awake, wincing when he realized he’d fallen asleep on his uninjured, right arm.  He shook it to get his blood flowing, then turned off his alarm.  He sighed, rubbing his eyes and standing up to trudge to the bathroom, dragging his feet as he brushed his teeth.

He jumped in the shower since he hadn’t taken one the night before, tempted to remove the gauze on his arm but deciding against it, assuming that Sasha would scold him if he did.  He dressed with both hands though, since at least his injured arm worked.

He was halfway through frying his usual five eggs for breakfast when he realized that it didn’t hurt at all; it barely even itched.

“Weird,” he mumbled, glancing at his arm.

Eren turned off the stove when the eggs reached the desired consistency and dumped them into a plate.  He sprinkled salt and poured enough hot sauce to maybe be considered ‘too much’.

It was really no surprise when he drank his weight in water afterwards.

He knocked on Sasha’s door around seven, and she answered immediately, wearing a bathrobe and with her hair loose around her shoulders; it was only fitting that they take turns seeing each other in various states of undress.

She stepped aside to let Eren into her apartment, shutting the door behind them.  “So how does it feel?” she asked.

“It just itches,” Eren answered, rolling up his sleeve so that she could see the gauze.

“Okay, bathroom,” she said, leading him back down the same hallway as the previous night and seating him on the toilet lid once more.

Eren offered her his arm, and she carefully removed the tape, murmuring an apology every time he winced from the irritating tug on his skin.

She threw the bandage away, and he looked up from where his eyes were fixed on the tile floor to glance at her as she gasped.  “What?” he said hesitantly.  “Is it infected?”

Sasha shook her head, her gaze flicking from the injury to Eren back to the injury.  “It’s completely healed,” she said.

“Wait, what?” Eren said.  He tore his arm out of her grip and examined it closely and, sure enough, it was completely unscathed; no hole, no scab, no scar, just a patch of skin that was not as dark as the rest.

“It’s unexpected,” Sasha commented.

“Y-yeah.”

* * *

To his astonishment, Sasha didn’t press Eren with any more questions; she just offered him food, which he declined, and a quick one-armed hug, which he accepted, before bidding him goodbye.

He made it to the bus stop with a few minutes to spare and so checked his phone, unsurprised to see another text message from Jean.

_I’ll be at the coffee shop on Rose and 13 th at 6._

Eren stared at it for a few seconds, wondering what he wanted.  To apologize, at least, and to return the file he hoped, especially since they hadn’t seen each other for over a week.

He’d never admit it, but he’d been keeping a close eye on the newspaper lately, for ‘new details for the public’ on the Maria case as well as for a red-suited sprinter stopping crimes as they happened.  Well, there was no luck on the former, for which he was relieved, and plenty of attention on the latter, which he wasn’t too sure _how_ he felt about.

Recognition was nice, sure, but that wasn’t why he broke criminal jaws.

The bus arrived, pulling Eren out of his head and into reality.  He climbed in after a few teenagers, who were chattering excitedly about returning to school in a few days (they were weirdoes then), and took his usual seat at the back corner, where he could typically sit unbothered.

A few stops later, a petite blonde woman took the seat beside him, her face locked in either perpetual anger or perpetual boredom.  When he first spotted her, he looked away, then did a double-take.  “Annie?”

She fixed her icy glare on Eren, a hint of recognition in her blue eyes.  “Eren,” she said simply.  She smiled slightly, a smile he’d rarely seen directed at anyone else.

“I didn’t know you rode the bus,” he commented.

“Only sometimes,” Annie said with a shrug.

Sasha’s words from last night (this morning?) ringing in his head, he inquired, “So do you have a new partner yet?”

Annie nodded and replied, “Yes, we’re working together for the first time today.”

“Oh, great,” Eren said.  “Have you met them before?”

“Yeah, she’s at our precinct.”  Her gaze flitted to the window, then back to the floor.

“Uh, so who is it?” Eren prompted, curious.

“Mikasa Ackerman.”

* * *

“Mikasa, what the fuck!”

“You’ll have to be more specific, Eren,” Mikasa said, crossing her arms.  She was dressed in a black pantsuit, her red scarf tucked into the blazer like a tie; she looked nice, but Eren wasn’t about to admit that when she’d neglected to tell him about her promotion.

“Why didn’t you tell me you got promoted?” he demanded, scowling.  “I thought we were friends.”

“We are friends, Eren,” she responded consolingly.  “You’ve just had a lot to deal with lately.”

_She knows something._   “So?  This is big, this is good, this is amazing, why the fuck didn’t you tell me?”

Mikasa placed her hand on his shoulder.  “Eren, calm down,” she said.

Eren shrugged her shoulder off.  “I am calm,” he lied, crossing his own arms.

She raised a skeptical eyebrow at him.  “Then why are you yelling?”

“I’m not yelling, who’s yelling?”

“Eren,” she repeated, grabbing his cheeks and lowering his face so that she could easily look him in the eye.  “Calm. The fuck. Down.”

Eren inhaled and exhaled a few times, pinching his eyes closed.  His heart pounded with unwelcome adrenaline and his arm itched.  “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“That’s okay,” Mikasa said, kissing his forehead.

He squirmed in her grip, and she let him go.  “I’ve just been. . .stressed out lately.”  _What a fucking understatement._

“I can tell,” Mikasa commented wryly.  “And yes, I was promoted; I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I only heard yesterday, okay?  Even Armin doesn’t know.”

“Yeah, uh, okay,” Eren said.  “Congratulations though.”  He enveloped her in a hug.  “Too bad your partner is the Ice Queen though.”

Mikasa returned the embrace, squeezing slightly.  “I thought you liked her.”

“I thought you didn’t.”

Mikasa reached up and pinched his ear.  “Touché.”

* * *

Mikasa was easily the most efficient beat cop in department history, with the most arrests per year since she arrived; that being said, even Levi agreed that she’d still do great work as a detective.

“She’ll be better, even,” he commented mildly when he passed Eren his work for the day, adding under his breath, “Might even be better than me.”

Eren pretended not to hear that part when he left, and not for the first time, he contemplated whether there was a relation between his boss and Mikasa.  Whenever someone asked Levi, he didn’t even deign to glance at them, and if someone approached Mikasa with the same question, she simply shrugged.

It was like even _they_ didn’t know.

“Did you hear about Mikasa’s promotion?” Eren asked Armin first chance he got.

“Yeah, ‘course I did,” Armin said, a slight frown on his face as he examined something on his computer screen.  “It’s all anyone here is talking about.”

“Right,” Eren said, wandering back towards the lab and slipping his safety glasses on.  He continued looking through the file on the Dimo Reeves murder, frustrated with the scant amount of physical evidence that had been recovered.  Even the detectives responsible for the case hadn’t been able to glean much through their interviews.

During his lunch break, he lounged at his desk, disinterestedly checking his emails while he tried not to doze off; he was still hungry after the three sandwiches he ate.

“Huh,” he breathed once his inbox was empty of anything unread.  No weird, ‘forgive me’ emails today.

The rest of the day passed by fairly monotonously, analyzing blood samples and even identifying a few careless robbers in Shiganshina (partially thanks to Eren’s own nighttime activities according to the corresponding files).

At five, he waved goodbye to Armin, who was still attempting to break a particularly frustrating firewall, and made his way out of the station.  He glanced towards the bus stop a block away with a frown, watching as others finishing work arrived.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, unlocked it, and reread Jean’s most recent text messages.  Then, sighing heavily, he walked down the main street, in the direction opposite the bus stop, towards where it intersected Rose Avenue.

Eren itched to take off at full speed, annoyed with the pace he set for himself, but he scratched his formerly injured arm distractedly instead right as he turned onto Rose and headed for 13th.

He looked up when the coffee shop came into view; it was a cute little thing he supposed, a popular hangout for college students.  He hadn’t been there in a while though, not since, well, not since Jean interviewed him for that stupid corruption article.

Now that he thought about it, every memory he had of this damn café included Jean.

_Well, fuck._

Eren glanced into a window and spotted the journalist himself slouching in a chair, his phone in hand.  On the table in front of him sat a cup of iced coffee and a manila folder.

A quick look at his mobile told Eren that Jean was actually at least a half-hour early, and he wasn’t sure if he should be flattered or annoyed by that.  And yes, the fact that Eren too was early was completely irrelevant.

Eren inhaled and exhaled bracingly, then pushed the door open and approached Jean, who looked up at the sound of his footsteps.

“Hey,” he said, sticking his cell phone in his pocket.

Eren sat down across from him, unable to stifle his sudden rage.  “You’re a fucking tease,” he accused immediately, “and yet I’m still here.”

“Okay, I’m really sorry—“

“That you stole confidential information _right off my desk_?” Eren interrupted angrily.  “Yeah, you’d better be fucking sorry.”

Jean narrowed his eyes at Eren and, tone bridging on exasperation, continued, “Look, I didn’t visit you to steal anything; I just. . . saw it and took it as an opportunity.”

“Two things.”  Eren held up two fingers.  “One:  I don’t believe you.”  He put down his index finger.  “Two:  you could get arrested for that.”  He kept his middle finger raised for a few more seconds for good measure, not caring that nearby parents were shooting disapproving looks, and certainly not caring that Jean’s face was pink with shame or anger or embarrassment or some other negative emotion.

No, he didn’t care about Jean’s feelings _at all._

He scowled across the table at Eren, palms planted firmly on its surface and leaned forward slightly.  He demanded challengingly, “Eren, when have I _ever_ lied to you?”

Eren gaped at Jean, a little stunned as he considered the question.  When he regained his composure, he pointed out, “There’s a first time for everything.”

Jean slammed his fist on the table, startling him.  “That’s the worst logic ever!”

“So is ‘hey, I’ll go visit Eren and maybe I’ll even _steal a file from him_ ’.”

They glared at each other, almost sizing each other up like they used to in college, Eren leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed and Jean leaning forward, his weight on the table.

“Fine, you don’t have to believe me,” Jean conceded softly.  He pushed the file forward.  “But I promise I didn’t take notes or make copies of anything in there.”

Eren twitched the folder open and raised his eyebrows when he noticed the top page.  “ _Didn’t_ take notes?” he said skeptically, picking up the paper and waving it.  “This is in _your_ handwriting.”

“I handwrote it,” Jean reiterated, “so there is nothing about this on any computer anywhere.”  He leaned back in his seat, mirroring Eren’s posture.  Squeaking slightly, he added, “If you want, you can even search my apartment and desk at work.”

Eren sighed and shook his head.  “As _tempting_ as the offer to search your place is, I guess I believe you.”

The journalist sitting across from him blushed and stuttered, “Y-you _guess_?”

“Yeah, because I still have the feeling that you’re trying to take advantage of me for information,” Eren admitted, unable to keep the hurt from his voice.

Jean stared at the table between them.  “I’m not,” he said quietly.  Then, he jerked his head up and explained, “Look, I didn’t just call you to return the file; I found something out too.”

“Oh really?”  Eren was curious despite himself.  “Does it have to do with the case?”

Jean nodded.  “But I think. . .”  He peered around, frowning when he made eye contact with a little kid.  “Let’s talk about it somewhere quieter.”

* * *

“It’s funny how all of our conversations end up so loud,” Jean observed as they walked side-by-side down Rose Avenue.

“Not really,” Eren said, shrugging.  “We spend most of them arguing anyway.”  He kept his eyes on his feet, careful not to trip or make a mistake like, well, ending up in the middle of a cornfield a hundred miles from the city.  They maintained a sedate pace, and it was already making him twitch with restlessness.  He stuck his hands in his jacket pockets in an attempt to calm himself.

“Good point,” Jean conceded with some amusement.

When Eren felt the other’s gaze on his face, he muttered, “Watch where you’re going.”

“I am.”

“No, you’re watching _me_ , and I don’t like it.”  Eren shook his head slightly to clear the strange sense of déjà vu.

“I can still see where I’m going,” he said, rather petulantly Eren thought.  “I’m not clumsy like _you_.”

Eren shot him a glare, and subsequently stumbled, grabbing onto something close – Jean’s arm – to keep from falling.  He recovered from his misstep so quickly that his companion didn’t seem to notice, but he definitely registered Eren’s hand on his arm.

“Eren, if you want to hold my hand, you can just ask,” he commented irritably.

“Why the hell would I want to hold your hand?” Eren retorted, matching Jean’s tone.  He retracted his arm, feeling his face flush as he sped up slightly, leaving him behind, until he remembered that he had no clue where they were headed.

“Uh. . .”  He glanced over his shoulder, lips parted in a half-formed question.

“My car is right there,” Jean said, nodding towards the street.  He halted beside a red sedan and raised an eyebrow amusedly.  “In fact, you just passed it.”

Eren, already several yards ahead, scowled and stalked back towards him.  “So where are we even going?  Library?”

“No, just my car,” Jean said simply.  He reached into his pocket and extracted his keys, clicking a button on the pad till the sedan’s headlights blinked.

“What’s wrong with the library?” Eren demanded, crossing his arms.

“I don’t want to be overheard.”

Eren scrutinized Jean’s face, wondering what he could possibly be getting at; since he stole the file – no, before that, since he took Eren’s words on a different case and twisted them, even if it was actually an _honest_ twist,for his newspaper, he couldn’t just trust him.  But there was something earnest about Jean’s expression, even more than usual, yet at the same time. . .  He’d witnessed Jean lying before, and though the untruths were never directed at Eren, he was frightfully _good_ at it.

Eren spotted a crease on his forehead; a sure sign of worry, one that couldn’t easily be faked, and realized that it had been present since, well, since they met up earlier.  He stifled the urge to reach across the gap between them and smooth it out with his fingertips and wordlessly stalked over to the passenger side of the car, opening the door and stepping inside.

Jean joined him right as Eren was getting comfortable.  He slipped the key into the ignition but left it there, the others on the ring clinking together softly as they settled.

They both stared straight ahead, the atmosphere tense.  Eren ground his teeth together impatiently and said, “Just spit it out.  What did you find?”

“Give me the file,” Jean said, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out his omnipresent tape recorder.  When Eren opened his mouth to protest, he waved it and tossed it into the back seat.

It was a display of good faith.

Eren, reassured despite himself, huffed air out of his nostrils but passed the case file over to Jean, who leaned it against the steering wheel as he opened it.  He flipped through a few papers before apparently finding what he was after.  He pulled it out carefully, grimaced, and turned it over so that Eren could see.

It was just a photograph, specifically of Maria Wall’s body when she was found dead in Shiganshina, and Eren was about to ask Jean what the hell he was getting at when he tapped a fingertip on the image of the dead woman’s arm.

“There’s something here,” Jean told him, voice quiet and measured, “something that the police might’ve missed.”

“What?” Eren said, plucking the picture from Jean’s hand and bringing it closer to his face.  He narrowed his eyes at the spot he indicated.  “Yeah, there’s something here, but I can’t really tell what. . .”  Confused, he glanced back at Jean.  “It looks kind of like a tattoo.”

Jean rolled his eyes, then reached back into the folder for his own notes.  “I drew a picture,” he said, flipping the page over to show Eren.

He recognized the grinning, toothy maw immediately.  “A-are you sure, Jean?” he said a little anxiously.

Jean nodded and raised an eyebrow at him.  “Have you seen it before?”

Eren hesitated.  “Uh, yeah, I have,” he admitted.  “They’re all over Shiganshina, these, uh, these _mouths_.”

Jean made a noise of assent.  “It looks evil, doesn’t it?”

Eren noted that he sounded a little afraid.  “Yeah, that’s what I thought too.”

“You know Shiganshina better than I do, so is it one of the gangs?” Jean inquired, peering at him from the corner of his eye.

“I don’t think so.”

Jean returned his notes and the photo to the folder.  “You suppose the police overlooked it?”

Eren shrugged.  “Maybe since it’s pretty small, but the coroner should’ve noticed it, at least.”

“Some kind of conspiracy?”

Eren gaped at him.  “You’re seriously paranoid, you know that?”

“You’ve read my stuff before,” Jean commented, not denying Eren’s words.  “I mean, that time you got in trouble. . .”  He trailed off, smiling wryly.

Eren thought he looked and even sounded a bit ashamed, which surprised him; he’d never known Jean to wear his regret on his sleeve, to feel guilty over something he wrote.

“In any case,” Jean continued, running his long fingers through his hair, “this probably shows that Maria Wall’s murder was organized by a group.”  When Eren opened his mouth to protest, he said, “Look, I’m not saying it was a _gang_ , but it seems pretty likely that it’s an organized crime.”

Eren then recalled something important.  “Dimo Reeves,” he muttered under his breath.

“Who?” Jean said, tilting his head to look at him.

Eren raised his voice:  “Dimo Reeves, a banker; he was caught up in some scandal a few years ago and reformed himself or something to improve his public image.”

“Oh, yeah.”  Jean nodded.  “Yeah, he gives money to all these causes now, right?  Cancer research and whatnot.  So what?”

“ _Gave,_ ” Eren corrected with a frown.  “He was found dead more than a week ago.”

“ _What?_   How the fuck do the police keep a death like that from the press?”

“Very carefully,” Eren said mildly.  “I don’t do public relations.”

“Yeah, you’d be pretty shitty at it,” Jean scoffed.  “But what does it have to do with Maria Wall?”

Eren prodded the file still perched against the car’s steering wheel.  “The coroner found _that_ symbol tattooed onto his arm,” he said, “and it was done postmortem.  Not to mention, they both had slit throats.”

“Well, fuck,” Jean breathed.  “They’ve gotta be related.”

“Yeah, I know that now.”  Eren rubbed his face and, voice muffled by his hands, continued, “The only thing is, when my boss went through the coroner’s report, he completely ignored the tattoo, like it wasn’t important.  I mean, postmortem tattoos are _really fucking weird_ ; you don’t just ignore stuff like that.”  He turned towards Jean, whose expression was floored.

“And you didn’t question him on it?” Jean deadpanned, although his face was disapproving.

“Well, what was I _supposed_ to do?” Eren challenged, waving his hand emphatically.  “Levi’s fucking _scary_ , even more than that _thing_.  And how the hell would I comment?  Every gang and their symbols in Shiganshina are known; it’s just _this_ one that’s a complete mystery.”

Jean slouched in his seat, crossing his arms.  “Okay, but if you bring the Maria Wall case back to their attention. . .”  He turned his face back towards Eren, who sighed.

“Yeah, I can try,” he agreed, “but they don’t like to reopen closed cases.”

Jean glanced between it and the folder, frowning.  Then, wryly, he said, “Too bad this speedy guy can’t have stopped _this_ crime.”

Eren was immediately on high alert.  “‘Speedy guy’?”

“Yeah, that guy that moves quickly,” Jean confirmed, waving a hand as if to explain.

“Not a really helpful description,” Eren noted.  He gripped his thighs, wondering if now would be a good time to flee; he was sure Jean didn’t know, _no way_ that he possibly could, but if he started asking specific questions. . .  Well, Eren had no illusions about his own ability to lie.

“How do you police people feel about him?” Jean wondered, half-turning his entire torso towards Eren.

Eren could feel the nervous sweat trickling down his back.  “A-as a whole?”

“Yeah,” Jean said, nodding.  “I imagine they hate him, since he’s doing their job and all.”  He stared at Eren intently, focused, and there was a distinct professional interest in his tone.

“I don’t know,” Eren replied quickly.  “Ask someone that’s had to deal with him if it’s for the paper.”

Jean scowled, immediately defensive as he accused, “What, every time I talk to you it has to be _for the_ _paper_?  Are you sure _you’re_ not the paranoid one?”

“We’re paranoid about different things then,” Eren retorted.

“Fine, tell me what _you_ think,” Jean suggested mutinously.  “I mean, I doubt our readers give a fuck what some forensic scientist that’s never even dealt with super-powered assholes thinks.”

Eren practically growled at him as he tugged on the door handle.  “I’ll talk to Levi about the cases,” he announced coldly, pushing the door open and stepping outside.  He flung it shut, rather satisfied when it slammed with enough force to rattle the car’s windows, and spun on his heels, trying to keep his pace measured when, more than anything, he wanted to sprint away at lightspeed.

Unfortunately, someone else had a different idea.

“Eren, wait!” he heard behind him.

Eren grimaced and refused to turn back, until he realized he was empty-handed.  “Shit,” he mumbled.  He’d meant to make a dramatic, pointed exit. . .  He turned around, just in time to see Jean already caught up to him, holding out the case folder.

“You forgot this, dumbass,” he grumbled with a scowl.

Eren snatched the file away and tucked it under his arm.  “Thanks,” he hissed.

“No problem,” Jean said, matching his tone perfectly.

They stood there on the sidewalk, glaring at each other while the crowd parted around them.  Eren begrudged Jean the two or so inches he had on him and wondered if this was how Levi felt around most people.  His gaze was inexplicably drawn to the journalist’s thin lips, thanks to them being at eye level.

Eren bit his own lip, refusing to follow _that_ treacherous train of thought.

Jean cleared his throat, breaking eye contact and glancing over his shoulder.  “Just let me know how the ‘confrontation’ with your boss goes,” he said, and before Eren could so much as accuse him of anything, he added, “And I _won’t_ be writing about it.”

“Right,” Eren said, nodding as Jean returned to his car.  He exhaled slowly, only now conscious of the rapidity of his heartbeat.

His phone buzzed twice in his pocket as he walked home.  He reached in and opened the text messages:

_I’m not the newspaper.  
I care what you think._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t recommend Sasha’s first aid. Seriously kids, don’t try this at home. Stay away from hydrogen peroxide, go to a hospital, you know, normal emergency stuff.
> 
> Also I need more Eren/Mikasa bickering in my life. ~~actually I need more eremika but never mind that~~

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading and I hope you like it so far! I promise almost everything mentioned in this will be relevant later.
> 
> Also, I have never been struck by lightning, so...
> 
> I welcome constructive criticism, especially since I'm currently writing the next bit. =]


End file.
